Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Shakespeare, William

Best Quotes about Greatness

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

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

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

Renan, Ernest

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

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

Horace

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.

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.

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

Booth, William

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

10.

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

Picabia, Francis

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Swift, Jonathan

16.

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

17.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

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

21.

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

Gardner, Edward

22.

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

Charles, Ray

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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.

25.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

26.

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

Hazlitt, William

27.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

28.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

29.

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

30.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

34.

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

35.

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

Halsey, William F.

36.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

37.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

38.

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