Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

- Hunt, Leigh

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Swift, Jonathan

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

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

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

Ruskin, John

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

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

Byron, Lord

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

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

Charles, Ray

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

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

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.

18.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

19.

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.

20.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

21.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Watson, James

23.

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

Johnson, Samuel

24.

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

Gardner, Edward

25.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

26.

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

Renan, Ernest

27.

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

Syrus, Publilius

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.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

31.

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

32.

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

Shakespeare, William

33.

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

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.

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

Winfrey, Oprah

36.

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

37.

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.

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.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

42.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

43.

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

44.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

45.

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

Rostand, Jean

46.

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

Darrow, Clarence

47.

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

48.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

49.

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.

50.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray