Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Winfrey, Oprah

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Charles, Ray

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

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

Winfrey, Oprah

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Darrow, Clarence

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

10.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

11.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

12.

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

Ruskin, John

13.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

14.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

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

16.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Renan, Ernest

20.

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

Rostand, Jean

21.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

22.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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.

25.

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

Johnson, Samuel

26.

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

Gardner, Edward

27.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

28.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

29.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

31.

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

32.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

34.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

35.

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

36.

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

Watson, James

37.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

38.

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

Hoffer, Eric

39.

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

40.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

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

Picabia, Francis

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Syrus, Publilius

49.

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

50.

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

Baudrillard, Jean