Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Swift, Jonathan

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

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

Winfrey, Oprah

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

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Darrow, Clarence

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

Ruskin, John

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

10.

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

11.

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

Booth, William

12.

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

Gardner, Edward

13.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

14.

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

Watson, James

15.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

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.

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

18.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Shakespeare, William

22.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

23.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

26.

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

Byron, Lord

27.

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

28.

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

Charles, Ray

29.

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.

30.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

31.

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

32.

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

Halsey, William F.

33.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

35.

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

Swift, Jonathan

36.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

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.

38.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

39.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

40.

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

41.

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

Johnson, Samuel

42.

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

Syrus, Publilius

43.

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

Renan, Ernest

44.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

45.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

46.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

47.

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

48.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

49.

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

50.

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