Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

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

Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Gardner, Edward

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

10.

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

Renan, Ernest

11.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

12.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

13.

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

14.

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

Swift, Jonathan

15.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

17.

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

18.

Hugo, Victor

19.

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

20.

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

Charles, Ray

21.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

22.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

23.

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

Byron, Lord

24.

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

Picabia, Francis

25.

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

Darrow, Clarence

26.

Well, I wouldn't say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Truman, Harry S

27.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

28.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

29.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

30.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

31.

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.

32.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

33.

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

Ruskin, John

34.

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

Booth, William

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Rostand, Jean

38.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

39.

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

40.

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

Horace

41.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

42.

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

43.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

44.

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

Shakespeare, William

45.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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

Hazlitt, William

47.

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.

48.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

49.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

50.

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

Syrus, Publilius