Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Halsey, William F.

Best Quotes about Greatness

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

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

Renan, Ernest

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Winfrey, Oprah

Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon --but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx --the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right?

Dylan, Bob

10.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

Horace

12.

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

13.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

14.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

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

Hoffer, Eric

16.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

17.

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

Ruskin, John

18.

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

Rostand, Jean

19.

Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more.

Beaumarchais, Pierre De

20.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

21.

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

22.

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

24.

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

25.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

26.

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

Watson, James

27.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

28.

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.

29.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

30.

At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

Donne, John

31.

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

32.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

Hazlitt, William

33.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

34.

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

35.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

36.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

37.

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

Picabia, Francis

38.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

39.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Gardner, Edward

41.

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

Charles, Ray

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, and broke the die.

Byron, Lord

45.

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

46.

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

Shakespeare, William

47.

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

Halsey, William F.

48.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

La Bruyere, Jean De

49.

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