Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Greatness & Great Things

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.
Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95) French Poet, Short Story Writer

The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.
Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist

In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness; thrust upon em.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Nothing great in this world has been accomplished without passion.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German Philosopher

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) American Abolitionist, Author

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist

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.
Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist

The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author

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.
Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author

They’re only truly great who are truly good.
George Chapman (c.1560–1634) English Poet, Playwright

Great and good are seldom the same man.
Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian

He’s the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth, Vermont. On Calvin Coolidge
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer

The first step toward greatness is to be honest.
Common Proverb

Great men are not always wise.
The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith

It’s not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.
Howard Gardner (b.1943) American Cognitive Psychologist

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.
Publilius Syrus (fl.85–43 BCE) Syrian-born Roman Latin Writer

Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more.
Pierre Beaumarchais (1732–99) French Inventor, Diplomat, Musician, Fugitive, Revolutionary

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.
Ray Charles (1930–2004) American Singer, Songwriter, Musician

With such ardent eyes he wandered o’er me, and gazed with such intensity of love, sending his soul out to me in a look.
Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.
Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author

No man is truly great who is great only in his own lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist

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.
John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric

There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist

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 don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle… (or) Einstein’s Theory of Relativity … (or) the Second Theory of Thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

Great men never make bad use of their superiority; they see it, and feel it, and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher

Greatness is a spiritual condition.
Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic

Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.
Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State

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