Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Horace

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Franklin, Benjamin

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

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

Swift, Jonathan

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.

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

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

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

Winfrey, Oprah

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

Booth, William

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

10.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

11.

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

12.

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

Shakespeare, William

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

Charles, Ray

15.

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

Picabia, Francis

16.

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

Ruskin, John

17.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

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

Hoffer, Eric

19.

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.

20.

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

Gardner, Edward

21.

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

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

24.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

25.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

26.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

27.

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

Halsey, William F.

28.

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

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.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

31.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

32.

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

Byron, Lord

33.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

Horace

36.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

37.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

38.

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

39.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

40.

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

Renan, Ernest

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

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

Johnson, Samuel

43.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

44.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

45.

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

Watson, James

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

49.

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

Rostand, Jean

50.

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.