Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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.

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Gardner, Edward

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

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

Byron, Lord

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

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

Booth, William

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

Shakespeare, William

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.

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

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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.

11.

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

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.

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

Halsey, William F.

14.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

15.

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

16.

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

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.

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.

19.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

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

Charles, Ray

21.

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.

22.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

23.

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

Renan, Ernest

24.

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

Syrus, Publilius

25.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

Ruskin, John

28.

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

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

37.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

38.

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

Shakespeare, William

39.

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

Horace

40.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

41.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

44.

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

Picabia, Francis

45.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

46.

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