Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Swift, Jonathan

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

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

Ruskin, John

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Winfrey, Oprah

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Syrus, Publilius

10.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

11.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

12.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

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.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

15.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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

Horace

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.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

20.

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

Halsey, William F.

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

26.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

27.

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

28.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

29.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

30.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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.

34.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

35.

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

Booth, William

36.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

37.

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

Byron, Lord

38.

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

Renan, Ernest

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

43.

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

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.

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

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

Darrow, Clarence

47.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?