Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Shakespeare, William

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. [Twelfth Night]

Shakespeare, William

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

10.

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

Gardner, Edward

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

13.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

14.

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

Montesquieu, Charles De

15.

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

Watson, James

16.

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

17.

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

Shakespeare, William

18.

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

Ruskin, John

19.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

20.

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

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

23.

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

Horace

24.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

25.

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

26.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

33.

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

34.

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

Rostand, Jean

35.

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

36.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

37.

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.

38.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

39.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

40.

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

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

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.

43.

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.

44.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

45.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

46.

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

Swift, Jonathan

47.

No great thing is created suddenly.