Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Renan, Ernest

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Charles, Ray

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

Ruskin, John

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

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

Hazlitt, William

10.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

11.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

13.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

17.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

19.

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

20.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

21.

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

22.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

23.

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

Shakespeare, William

24.

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

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Renan, Ernest

27.

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

28.

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

Booth, William

29.

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

Gardner, Edward

30.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

31.

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.

32.

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

Rostand, Jean

33.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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

Watson, James

35.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

36.

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

37.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

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.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

40.

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

Byron, Lord

41.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

42.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

43.

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

44.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

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.

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

Darrow, Clarence

47.

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.

48.

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

Hoffer, Eric

49.

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

Horace

50.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage