Motivational Quotes

Greatness

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

- Froude, James A.

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Picabia, Francis

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

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

Watson, James

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

Shakespeare, William

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

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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

Franklin, Benjamin

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

10.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

11.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

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

Halsey, William F.

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

16.

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

17.

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

Renan, Ernest

18.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

19.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

20.

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

Syrus, Publilius

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.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

23.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

24.

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

Rostand, Jean

25.

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.

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.

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

Darrow, Clarence

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

31.

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

Ruskin, John

32.

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

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Booth, William

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

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

Charles, Ray

39.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

40.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

42.

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.

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.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Horace

47.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

48.

No great thing is created suddenly.