Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Hazlitt, William

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

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

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

10.

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

Shakespeare, William

11.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

12.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

13.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

14.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

15.

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

16.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

17.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

18.

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

Byron, Lord

19.

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.

20.

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

Darrow, Clarence

21.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

25.

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

Horace

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

29.

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

30.

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

Shakespeare, William

31.

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

32.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

33.

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

Renan, Ernest

34.

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

Booth, William

35.

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

Picabia, Francis

36.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

37.

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

38.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

39.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

43.

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

Hoffer, Eric

44.

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.

45.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

46.

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

Ruskin, John

47.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

48.

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

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur