Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

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.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

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

Halsey, William F.

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

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

10.

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.

11.

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

Charles, Ray

12.

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.

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

15.

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

Shakespeare, William

16.

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.

17.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

18.

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

Johnson, Samuel

19.

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

Gardner, Edward

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Ruskin, John

24.

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

Horace

25.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

26.

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

Swift, Jonathan

27.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

28.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

29.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

30.

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

Hoffer, Eric

31.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

32.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

35.

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

36.

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

Syrus, Publilius

37.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

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.

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.

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

42.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

43.

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

Picabia, Francis

44.

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