Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

- Dane, Frank

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Winfrey, Oprah

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

Byron, Lord

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Halsey, William F.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

13.

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

14.

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

Booth, William

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Syrus, Publilius

19.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

20.

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

21.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

22.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

23.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

24.

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

Shakespeare, William

25.

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

Horace

26.

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

Hazlitt, William

27.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

28.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

30.

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.

31.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

32.

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

33.

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

Gardner, Edward

34.

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

35.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

36.

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.

37.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

38.

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.

39.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Rostand, Jean

41.

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

Renan, Ernest

42.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

Ruskin, John

44.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

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

46.

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

Watson, James

47.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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.

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