Motivational Quotes

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.

Best Quotes about Greatness

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

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

Swift, Jonathan

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 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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

10.

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

Gardner, Edward

11.

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.

12.

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

Charles, Ray

13.

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

Horace

14.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

15.

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

16.

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

Ruskin, John

17.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

18.

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

Picabia, Francis

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.

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

Halsey, William F.

21.

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

Byron, Lord

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Johnson, Samuel

24.

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

Hoffer, Eric

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Syrus, Publilius

29.

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

Shakespeare, William

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

33.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

38.

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.

39.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

40.

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

Shakespeare, William

41.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

42.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

43.

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

44.

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

Watson, James

45.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

46.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

47.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

48.

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

49.

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

Darrow, Clarence

50.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De