Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

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.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

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

Hazlitt, William

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

Rostand, Jean

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 be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Swift, Jonathan

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

13.

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

Booth, William

14.

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.

15.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

16.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

18.

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

19.

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

Gardner, Edward

20.

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

Watson, James

21.

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

22.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

23.

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

24.

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

Halsey, William F.

25.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

26.

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

Shakespeare, William

27.

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

Byron, Lord

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

30.

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.

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.

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

Syrus, Publilius

33.

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

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

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.

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

Ruskin, John

41.

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.

42.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

43.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

44.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

45.

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

Picabia, Francis

46.

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

Renan, Ernest

47.

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

48.

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

Shakespeare, William

49.

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

50.

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

Carlyle, Thomas