Greatness Quotes

There is a greatness in being generous, and there is only simple justice in satisfying creditors. Generosity is the part of the soul raised above the vulgar.

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

The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both.

Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it.

It is the privilege of greatness to confer intense happiness with insignificant gifts.

No possible combination of circumstances can keep a man down, if he makes his personal attitude right and determines to rise.

The age does not believe in great men, because it does not possess any.

Do not talk about your greatness; you are really, in essential nature, no greater than those around you.

For he that once is good, is ever great.

The capacity for tears is the last demonstration of greatness.

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.

I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.

There would be no great ones, if there were no little ones.

Envy not greatness: for thou mak'st thereby Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater.

Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled.

Great men are among the best gifts which God bestows upon a people.

America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused - preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.

It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.

The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

You've got to keep your body active, even if that means just turning on some music and dancing for an hour. ...That's how you;ll prepare your bodies and your minds for greatness.

I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.

Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.

Originality, then, ultimately distinguishes art from craft. We may say, therefore, that it is the yardstick of artistic greatness or importance.

I just feel that my competitive drive is far greater than anyone else that I've met, and I think that I thrive on that.

Mediocrity in politics is not to be despised. Greatness is not needed.

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

I believe greatness is an evolutionary process that changes and evolves era to era.

Each part of a great painting should in itself be a great painting.

There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.

The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.

To feel themselves in the presence of true greatness many find it necessary only to be alone.

For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

Earthly greatness is a nice thing, and requires so much chariness in the managing, as the contentment of it cannot requite.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

The great man... walks across his century and leaves the marks of his feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes as he passes.

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

My fellow Minnesotans join me in mourning the loss of America's 40th President and celebrating the life of a man who personified both the greatness and goodness of America.

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

One of Nadal’s strengths is that he’s so humble, that he’s surprised at what he has achieved, and that he has never bought into his greatness.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one's self.

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants.

Everyone can be awesome if they want it bad enough. And I don't believe that anyone wants to be average. I think everybody desires greatness, at least at some point in their life.

Greatness has nothing to do with diversity, skin color, race, ethnicity, nothing to do with it.