Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Schopenhauer, Arthur

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

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

Shakespeare, William

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

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

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

Franklin, Benjamin

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

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

Darrow, Clarence

10.

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

Renan, Ernest

11.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

12.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

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

Shakespeare, William

14.

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.

15.

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

Rostand, Jean

16.

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.

17.

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

Gardner, Edward

18.

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

Hoffer, Eric

19.

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

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

22.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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.

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

Halsey, William F.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Ruskin, John

30.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

31.

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

32.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

33.

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

Charles, Ray

34.

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

35.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

36.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

37.

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.

38.

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

Syrus, Publilius

39.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

40.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

41.

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

42.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

43.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

44.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

45.

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.

46.

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

Watson, James

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

50.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin