Motivational Quotes

Greatness

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

- Froude, James A.

Best Quotes about Greatness

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

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

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

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

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

Charles, Ray

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.

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

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

13.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

14.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

Renan, Ernest

16.

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

Horace

17.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

18.

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.

19.

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

Hoffer, Eric

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

23.

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

24.

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

25.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

26.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

28.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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.

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.

31.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

32.

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

Shakespeare, William

33.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

40.

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

Booth, William

41.

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

Byron, Lord

42.

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

43.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

46.

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

47.

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

Syrus, Publilius

48.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

49.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

50.

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