Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Shakespeare, William

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

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

Charles, Ray

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.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

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

Shakespeare, William

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

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

Rostand, Jean

10.

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

11.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

12.

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

13.

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

14.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

15.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

16.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

17.

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

18.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

23.

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

Hazlitt, William

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

28.

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

Ruskin, John

29.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

Swift, Jonathan

32.

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

Hoffer, Eric

33.

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

Byron, Lord

34.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

35.

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

Darrow, Clarence

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

39.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

40.

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

Syrus, Publilius

41.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

42.

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

Horace

43.

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

44.

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

45.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

46.

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

47.

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

Booth, William

48.

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

Picabia, Francis

49.

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

Renan, Ernest

50.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?