“He entered into life with a burden that most of us bear: with the example of great men before his eyes and the desire to follow in their footsteps, but without any knowledge of petty men, who are the only ones we meet.”

— Meša Selimović , book Death and the Dervish

Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), Part II, page. 329.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

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Meša Selimović 5

Yugoslav-Bosnian writer 1910–1982

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“That man is … odd," I dared say to William.
"He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.”

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“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

“To increase the number of men and women in all lands who will refuse absolutely to sanction the use of any unchristian weapon, who will follow without compromise the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and who will seek diligently by every possible means to spread abroad in the lives of individuals and of nations the spirit of Jesus, this is the only sure way to abolish war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 107

“He was always before men’s eyes; a course of action which, by increasing our familiarity with great men, diminishes our respect for them.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

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“I remember a tutor who told me that all the world's hunters have eyes that faced front: lions, hawks, wolves, men … He said man was no different from the tiger. We are nature's killers, and we have great appetites for it … Listen, Rayvan, the beast is in all of us. We do our best in life, but often we are mean, or petty, or needlessly cruel. We don't mean to be, but that's the way we are.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 14

“History, in [Nietzsche’s] view, belongs to him who is fighting a great fight, and who needs examples, teachers and comforters, but cannot find them among his contemporaries. Without history the mountain chain of great men’s great moments, which runs through millennia, could not stand clearly and vividly before me.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 17

“There are no great men, there are only great challenges, which ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.”

William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (1882–1959) United States admiral

Quoted in the Congressional Record, 11 December 1971 http://books.google.com/books?id=ltuwtwQcKHwC&q=%22There+are+no+great+men+there+are%22+%22only+great+challenges+which+ordinary+men+like+you+and+me+are++forced+by+circumstances+to+meet%22&pg=PA46480#v=onepage.

“It is too easy to see Crowley as an overgrown juvenile delinquent with a passion for self-advertisement. But there was another Crowley, the Crowley recognized and admired by Frank Bennett. Unless we understand this, we totally fail to grasp the extraordinary influence that Crowley could exert on women like Rose and Leah, and on men like Neuberg, Sullivan and Bennett. They came to believe that Crowley was exactly what he claimed to be: a great teacher, the messiah of a new age. And this was not the gullibility of born dupes; Sullivan, at least, was one of the most intelligent men of his age (as his book on Beethoven reveals). Crowley was, in part, a great teacher, a man of profound insights. Mencius says: 'Those who follow the part of themselves that is great become great men; those who follow the part of themselves that is small will become small men.' But Crowley was a strange mixture who devoted about equal time to following both parts of himself, and so became a curious combination of greatness and smallness. A summary of his life, and his extraordinary goings-on, makes us aware of the smallness; but it would be sheer short-sightedness to overlook the element of greatness that so impressed Bennett.”

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“God give us men. The time demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-browned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.”

Josiah Gilbert Holland Wanted

Wanted, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“He entered into life with a burden that most of us bear: with the example of great men before his eyes and the desire to follow in their footsteps, but without any knowledge of petty men, who are the only ones we meet.”

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Meša Selimović 5

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