Quotes about greatness

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“Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.”

“The devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.”

“I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.”

“Leo had seen Tia Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let's unleash her rage. Great idea.”

“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”

“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.”

“Hope knows that if great trials are avoided great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted.”

“Self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness.”

“I felt like time was a great sea, and I was floating on the back of a turtle, and no sails broke the horizon.”

“Death is a great tragedy…a profound loss…I don’t accept it…I think people are kidding themselves when they say they are comfortable with death.”

“Waiting patiently doesn't suit you. I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about.
[Mameha]”

“A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.”

“It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”

“Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people… Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked.”

“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”

“A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.”

“There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities”

“You would make a great teacher. (Grace)
Commander to teacher. Why not call me Cato the Elder, and really insult me while you’re at it? (Julian)”

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”

“Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.”

“Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.”

“Wouldn't it be great if people could get to live suddenly as often as they die suddenly?”

“Great," I said. "Another conference call. I havegot to start blocking your number.”

“It would be so great if it were possible to go through life without making a single mistake but there is no such path. Falling, tripping, losing the way, making mistakes, little by little, walking one step at a time, this is the only way.”

“The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.”

“It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.”

“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”

“Great wits are sure to madness near alli'd;
And thin partitions do their bounds divide”

“It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.”

“It took him a long, miserable time before he realized the truth of things: There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.”

“We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes.”

“Andrea: "…. I think a dog is a great idea. I just never pictured you with a mutant poodle.”
Kate: “He isn’t a poodle. He’s a Doberman mix."
Andrea: “Aha. Keep telling yourself that.”

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”

“Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy”

“To have great poets,
there must be great audiences.”

“may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.”

“I have not led an ordinary life, nor a life that would suit everyone. I took great risks, but because I did, I also earned great reward. I found the way to show my true face freely, without fear. Because of this, I found true love.”

“You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.”

“I'm a godmother, that's a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that's cute, I taught her that.”

“It is best not to go on for great quest for truth, it will only make you miserable”

“Great boldness is seldom without some absurdity.”

“Each day is a new opportunity. I chose to make this day a great one.”

“I turned to Annabeth and shook my head in exasperation. “Always Hercules. What is it with Hercules?”

Annabeth shrugged. “He had a great publicist.”

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

“Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar.”

“I suppose that each of us may have a great moment in our life, a month, a week a year, when we are most fully what we are meant to be”

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English--but are great in remembering signs”

“Is it possible to specialize in more than one element?"
She laughed and shook her head. "No. Too much power. No one could handle all that magic, not without losing her mind."
Oh. Great.”

“How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”

“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”

“Mahoney: "Thirty-seven seconds. Great, well done; now we wait."

Mr. Magorium: "No, we breathe, we pulse, we regenerate. our hearts beat, our minds create, our souls ingest. Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime.”

“You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.
— Tiny Cooper”

“Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.”

“Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!”

“If a story is not about the hearer he [or she] will not listen… A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting--only the deeply personal and familiar.”

“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.”

“I'm leaving!" she said, with, in her opinion, great drama and resolve.
But he just answered her with a sly half smile, and said, "I'm following."
And the bloody man remained two strides behind her the entire way home.”

“I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.”

“nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.”

“To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

“They never fail who die
In a great cause.”

“She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”

“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.”

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”

“A great leap in the dark”

“The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.”

“Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.”

“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”

“Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.”

“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.”

“Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!”

“There comes a time for everybody when words and reasons can become such a great weariness.”

“Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”

“The wheel of fortune […] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.”

“I never noticed the stars before. I always thought of them as great big diamonds that belonged to some one. Now they frighten me. They make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth.”

“You see the great thing about madness is that it's all in your head.”

“And I'll wash your other clothes. Shall I also order you a new set of leathers?"
"Don't-" Wrath shut his mouth. "Sure. That'd be great. And, ah, could you get me some boxers? Black? XXL?”

“In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is not primarily a matter of weakness, stupidity, disobedience, or disrespect. It is a matter of miscasting.”

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

“Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly.”

“I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning… rather than one great dull answer to all our questions”

“Any woman or man who would write the truth of their lives would write a great work. But no one has dared to write the truth of their lives.”

“There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.”

“Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you.”

“He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.”

“When love is involved no sacrifice is too great.”

“Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.”

“The next time you're mad at me, talk to me,' he said. 'Don't shut me out. I don't like playing games. And by the way, I had a great time, too.”

“What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?”

“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.”

“The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it.”

“Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”

“I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.”

“Abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. For the great disadvantage of secrecy is that it’s interesting.”

“It is my great hope someday, to see science and decision makers rediscover what the ancients have always known. Namely that our highest currency is respect.”