Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

- Truman, Harry S

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

Horace

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

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

Hazlitt, 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

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

Baudrillard, Jean

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

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

Booth, William

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

10.

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

11.

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

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.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Halsey, William F.

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

22.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

23.

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.

24.

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

Shakespeare, William

25.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

26.

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

27.

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

Darrow, Clarence

28.

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

29.

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

Byron, Lord

30.

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

31.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

32.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

33.

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

Gardner, Edward

34.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

35.

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

Watson, James

36.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

37.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

39.

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.

40.

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

Rostand, Jean

41.

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

Syrus, Publilius

42.

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

Renan, Ernest

43.

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

Hoffer, Eric

44.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

45.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

46.

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

Picabia, Francis

47.

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.

48.

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

Johnson, Samuel

49.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

50.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De