Motivational Quotes

Greatness

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

- Swift, Jonathan

Best Quotes about Greatness

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

Winfrey, Oprah

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

Johnson, Samuel

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

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.

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

Hoffer, Eric

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

Franklin, Benjamin

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

Ruskin, John

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

Syrus, Publilius

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

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

10.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

11.

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

Charles, Ray

12.

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

13.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

15.

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

16.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Picabia, Francis

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Tolstoy, Count Leo

22.

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

Gardner, Edward

23.

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

24.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

25.

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

26.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

27.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

28.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

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

Shakespeare, William

30.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

31.

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

Watson, James

32.

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

Renan, Ernest

33.

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

Montesquieu, Charles De

34.

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.

35.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

36.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

37.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

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.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

40.

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

41.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

42.

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.

43.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

Horace

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Halsey, William F.

49.

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

Hazlitt, William

50.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray