Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

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

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Halsey, William F.

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

Gardner, Edward

10.

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

Charles, Ray

11.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

12.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

13.

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

Watson, James

14.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

15.

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

Byron, Lord

16.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

17.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

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

Horace

19.

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

Hazlitt, William

20.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

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.

22.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

Booth, William

24.

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

25.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

27.

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

Picabia, Francis

28.

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.

29.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

30.

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

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

33.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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.

37.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

38.

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

39.

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

Shakespeare, William

40.

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Darrow, Clarence

42.

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

Renan, Ernest

43.

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

44.

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

Hoffer, Eric

45.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

46.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

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.

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

Syrus, Publilius

49.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

50.

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