Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Hoffer, Eric

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

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.

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

Horace

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

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

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

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

Johnson, Samuel

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

10.

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

11.

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

Shakespeare, William

12.

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

13.

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

14.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

15.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

16.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

17.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

18.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

19.

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

Hazlitt, William

20.

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.

21.

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

22.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

23.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

24.

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

Shakespeare, William

25.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

26.

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

Picabia, Francis

27.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

28.

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

Charles, Ray

29.

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

Syrus, Publilius

30.

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

31.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

38.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

39.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Halsey, William F.

42.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

43.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

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

Renan, Ernest

45.

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.

46.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

47.

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

48.

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

Byron, Lord

49.

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

50.

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

Gardner, Edward