Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Ruskin, John

Best Quotes about Greatness

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

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

Gardner, Edward

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

Hoffer, Eric

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

Renan, Ernest

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

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

Halsey, William F.

10.

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

11.

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

Charles, Ray

12.

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

13.

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

14.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

15.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

16.

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

Darrow, Clarence

17.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Plato

18.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

19.

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

20.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

21.

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

Shakespeare, William

22.

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.

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

Ruskin, John

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

28.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

29.

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

Hazlitt, William

30.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

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

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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.

34.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

35.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

36.

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

37.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

38.

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

Byron, Lord

39.

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

40.

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