Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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.

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Byron, Lord

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

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

Picabia, Francis

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.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

10.

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

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.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

13.

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

14.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Ruskin, John

19.

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.

20.

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.

21.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

22.

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

Charles, Ray

23.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

24.

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

Syrus, Publilius

25.

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

Hazlitt, William

26.

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

27.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

28.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

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

30.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

31.

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

Swift, Jonathan

32.

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

Gardner, Edward

33.

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

34.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

38.

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

39.

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

Horace

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

42.

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

Renan, Ernest

43.

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

Rostand, Jean

44.

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

Shakespeare, William

45.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

46.

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

47.

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

Darrow, Clarence

48.

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

49.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

50.

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