“Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 202
American poet 1807–1882Related quotes
Variant: Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137
Source: Medieval castles (2005), Ch. 1 : The Great Tower : Norman and Early Plantagenet Castles
“You would not think any duty small,
If you yourself were great.”
Willie's Question
The Disciple and Other Poems (1867)
“Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.”
1963, UN speech
Context: The task of building the peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition. The cold war is not the only expression of tension in this world — and the nuclear race is not the only arms race. Even little wars are dangerous in a nuclear world. The long labor of peace is an undertaking for every nation — and in this effort none of us can remain unaligned. To this goal none can be uncommitted.