Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

- Truman, Harry S

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

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

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Johnson, Samuel

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

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

Watson, James

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

Darrow, Clarence

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

Charles, Ray

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

10.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

11.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

12.

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

Rostand, Jean

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.

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

15.

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

Hazlitt, William

16.

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.

17.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

18.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

20.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

21.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

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.

23.

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

Gardner, Edward

24.

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.

25.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

26.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

27.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

29.

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

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

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

Ruskin, John

33.

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

34.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

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

42.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

43.

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

Renan, Ernest

44.

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

Picabia, Francis

45.

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

Shakespeare, William

46.

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

Booth, William

47.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

48.

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

Halsey, William F.

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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