Quotes about greatness

"You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration."

Allen, James on greatness
7 fans of this quote   

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"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 on greatness   

"Greatness is a spiritual condition."

Arnold, Matthew on greatness
4 fans of this quote   

"The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth --the power to love --although I have put it last, is the rarest."

Asquith, Margot on greatness
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"We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself."

Baudrillard, Jean on greatness   

"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 on greatness   

"The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end."

Beerbohm, Sir Max on greatness   

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"Great men are not always wise."

Bible on greatness   

"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 on greatness   

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon on greatness
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"Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on greatness
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"The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender."

Booth, William on greatness
5 fans of this quote   

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

Bowen, Elizabeth on greatness   

"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 on greatness   

"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 on greatness   

"The great must submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long submit to the dominion of the great."

Burke, Edmund on greatness   

"Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state."

Burke, Edmund on greatness   

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

Byron, Lord on greatness   

"What millions died that Caesar might be great?"

Campell, Joseph on greatness   

"All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning."

Camus, Albert on greatness
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"The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious."

Carlyle, Thomas on greatness   

"No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

Carlyle, Thomas on greatness   

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"All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know."

Carrel, Alexis on greatness   

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

Charles, Ray on greatness
6 fans of this quote   

"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 on 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. on greatness
10 fans of this quote   

"Great and good are seldom the same man."

Fuller, Thomas on greatness   

"The price of greatness is responsibility."

Churchill, Winston on greatness
28 fans of this quote   

"Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on greatness   

"Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately."

Dane, Frank on greatness   

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

Darrow, Clarence on greatness   

"It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations."

Dickens, Charles on greatness   

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

Disraeli, Benjamin on greatness
3 fans of this quote   

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

Disraeli, Benjamin on greatness
6 fans of this quote   

"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 on greatness   

"I can write good songs. I can sing 'em, and I mean it, I mean it deeply, and I pour everything into that. Other than that, I suck."

Duritz, Adam on greatness   

"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 on greatness
3 fans of this quote   

"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on greatness   

"Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on greatness   

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"The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on greatness
3 fans of this quote