Quotes on Greatness

Great and good are seldom the same man.

The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.

Love animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, don't harrass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost every one of us!

The magnitude of a progress is gauged by the greatness of the sacrifice that it requires.

A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.

Those things which we call extraordinary, remarkable, or unusual may make history, but they do not make real life. After all, to do well those things which God ordained to be the common lot of all mankind, is the truest greatness. To be a successful father or a successful mother is greater than to be a successful general or a successful statesman.

Every luminary in the constellation of human greatness, like the stars, comes out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God.

He only is a great man who can neglect the applause of the multitude and enjoy himself independent of its favor.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her.

Anecdote: Greatness Means Leading the Way. No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatness, It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluent; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally.

The greatness of work is inside man.

The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.

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.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares when working to another aim.

A man is not as big as his belief in himself; he is as big as the number of persons who believe in him.

There is sense in hoping for recognition in a distant future only when we take it for granted that mankind will remain essentially unchanged, and that whatever is great is not for one age only but will be looked upon as great for all time.

In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them.

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

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.

There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: "he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone." But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes.

Of all man's works of art, a cathedral is greatest. A vast and majestic tree is greater than that.