Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

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

Ruskin, John

10.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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

Hoffer, Eric

14.

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

Picabia, Francis

15.

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

16.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

17.

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

Rostand, Jean

18.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

19.

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

20.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

21.

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

Horace

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

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

Hazlitt, William

25.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

26.

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

Halsey, William F.

27.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

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

Renan, Ernest

30.

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

Booth, William

31.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

32.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

33.

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

34.

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

Gardner, Edward

35.

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.

36.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

40.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

41.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

42.

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.

43.

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

44.

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

Swift, Jonathan

45.

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

Shakespeare, William

46.

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

Johnson, Samuel

47.

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

Byron, Lord

48.

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

49.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

50.

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