Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Great men always pay deference to greater.

- Landor, Walter Savage

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

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

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

Ruskin, John

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Watson, James

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

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

Syrus, Publilius

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

10.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

11.

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

Hazlitt, William

12.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

13.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

14.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Darrow, Clarence

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

20.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

21.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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.

24.

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

Horace

25.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

26.

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

27.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

28.

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

Gardner, Edward

29.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

30.

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

31.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

32.

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

Renan, Ernest

33.

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

Rostand, Jean

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Picabia, Francis

37.

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

Charles, Ray

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Hoffer, Eric

41.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

42.

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.

43.

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.

44.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

45.

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

46.

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

Halsey, William F.

47.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

48.

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.

49.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

50.

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