Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

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.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

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

Byron, Lord

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Shakespeare, William

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

10.

Bruyere, Jean De La

11.

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

Horace

12.

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

13.

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

Picabia, Francis

14.

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

Swift, Jonathan

15.

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

16.

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

Ruskin, John

17.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

18.

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

19.

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

Charles, Ray

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

Shakespeare, William

24.

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

25.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

26.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

27.

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.

28.

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

Hoffer, Eric

29.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

30.

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

Halsey, William F.

31.

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

32.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

33.

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

Rostand, Jean

34.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

35.

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

Watson, James

36.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

40.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

41.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

44.

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

Darrow, Clarence

45.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Hazlitt, William

50.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo