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greatness quotes

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“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“To be great is to be misunderstood.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
“Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some get it as a graduation gift.” Robin Williams, Robin Williams Live On Broadway
“It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“No, not one shall be forgotten who was great in the world. But each was great in his own way, and each in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. For he who loved himself became great by himself, and he who loved other men became...” Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
“Be not afraid of greatness.” William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles
“Only fools want to be great.” T. H. White, The Once and Future King
“Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
“all things are admired, either because they are new, or because they are great.” Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
“After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things — terrible, yes, but great.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
“For it is not what happens to me that makes me great, but it is what I do, and there is surely no one who thinks that a man became great because he won the great prize in the lottery.” Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
“Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“I do not speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances reduces it to very discreet...” W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“Be great in act, as you have been in thought;” William Shakespeare, King John
“A great man is always willing to be little.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation
“The greatest ideas are the simplest.” William Golding, Lord of the Flies
“The History of the World, I said already, was the Biography of Great Men.” Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History
“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves—or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything.” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves. All they wanted was the chance to do good for others and be close to God.” Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will...” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort.” Confucius, Analects
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack: the round world should have shook lions into civil streets, and citizens to their dens.” William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
“it's better to write of great deeds than to perform trivial ones” Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew
“I fear those big words . . . which make us so unhappy.” James Joyce, Ulysses
“Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.” Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.” Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History
“Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.” Oscar Wilde, Intentions
“Remember, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“But America is too great for small dreams.” Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address
“The greatest minds never realise their ideals in any matter;” Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
“There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!” Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History
“We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.” Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
“Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.” Honoré de Balzac, Letters of Two Brides
“He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.” Jack London, White Fang
“Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise.” Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History
“All great and precious things are lonely.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“To major things the surest road is on the minor pains bestowed, if you don't happen to be in a hurry.” Samuel Beckett, Molloy
“To make America the greatest is my goal, So I beat the Russians, and I beat the Pole, and for the USA won the Medal of Gold. Italians said, 'You're Greater than the Cassius of Old.'” Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly
“It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.” George Eliot, Middlemarch
“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

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Related topics

success circumstance graduation goal action death thought life God writing soul weakness history ideas America achievement failure speech love simplicity

Related authors

William Shakespeare (5)
Thomas Carlyle (4)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (3)
Ayn Rand (3)
Oscar Wilde (2)
J. K. Rowling (2)
Muhammad Ali (2)
Blaise Pascal (2)
Søren Kierkegaard (2)
Robin Williams (1)
Confucius (1)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1)
William Golding (1)
J. R. R. Tolkien (1)
Samuel Beckett (1)
John Steinbeck (1)
W. Somerset Maugham (1)
Mary Shelley (1)
George Eliot (1)
Henry Miller (1)

Related sources

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (4)
Twelfth Night (2)
Intentions (2)
Fear and Trembling (2)
The Soul of a Butterfly (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
Pensées (2)
The Fellowship of the Ring (1)
Ulysses (1)
The Brothers Karamazov (1)
Self-Reliance (1)
Compensation (1)
Analects (1)
Antony and Cleopatra (1)
State of the Union Address (1)
Hamlet (1)
Moby-Dick (1)
The Moon and Sixpence (1)
King John (1)
East of Eden (1)