Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

Swift, Jonathan

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Darrow, Clarence

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

10.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

11.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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

13.

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

Picabia, Francis

14.

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

Renan, Ernest

15.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

16.

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.

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

21.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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.

24.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

25.

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.

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Syrus, Publilius

32.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

33.

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.

34.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

35.

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

36.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

37.

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

Halsey, William F.

38.

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

Shakespeare, William

39.

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

Ruskin, John

40.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

41.

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

42.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

44.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Byron, Lord

49.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

50.

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.