Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

- Dane, Frank

Best Quotes about Greatness

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Carlyle, Thomas

It's not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.

Gardner, Edward

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

Let us never forget that the greatest man is never more than an animal disguised as a god.

Picabia, Francis

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.

Mcgovern, George

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer --the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Taylor, A. J. P.

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

Bruyere, Jean De La

11.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

Ruskin, John

12.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

13.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

Forster, Edward M.

14.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

15.

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Renan, Ernest

16.

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

Baudrillard, Jean

17.

Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

Hoffer, Eric

19.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

21.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Johnson, Samuel

22.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

Horace

23.

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

Chesterfield, Lord

24.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Bowen, Elizabeth

25.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

26.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Swift, Jonathan

27.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

All my life I have always known I was born to greatness.

Winfrey, Oprah

29.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

Syrus, Publilius

31.

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

Rostand, Jean

32.

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

Hugo, Victor

34.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

35.

Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

It is necessary to be slightly under employed if you are to do something significant.

Watson, James

37.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

38.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

39.

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

Shakespeare, William

40.

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

41.

I can write good songs. I can sing 'em, and I mean it, Imean it deeply, and I pour everything into that. Other than that, I suck.

Duritz, Adam

42.

The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

Miller, Henry

43.

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

Halsey, William F.

44.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

He's the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth, Vermont. [On Calvin Coolidge]

Darrow, Clarence

46.

No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.

Brooks, Phillips

47.

The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.

Booth, William

48.

After a fellow gets famous it does not take long for someone to bob up that used to sit next to him in school.

Hubbard, Kin

49.

It is not difficult to get away into retirement; and there live upon your own convictions; nor is it difficult to mix with men and follow their convictions; but to enter into the world; and there live firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience; that is Christian greatness.

50.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

Charles, Ray