Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Syrus, Publilius

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Halsey, William F.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Hazlitt, William

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

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

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

Franklin, Benjamin

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

10.

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.

11.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

12.

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

Renan, Ernest

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Swift, Jonathan

19.

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

Byron, Lord

20.

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

21.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

22.

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

Watson, James

23.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

24.

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

25.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

26.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

27.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

28.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

29.

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

30.

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

Syrus, Publilius

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.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

33.

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.

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

36.

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

Shakespeare, William

37.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

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

39.

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

Booth, William

40.

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

Darrow, Clarence

41.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

42.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

43.

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

Charles, Ray

44.

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

45.

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

Gardner, Edward

46.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

47.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

48.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

49.

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.

50.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon