Quotes about greatness

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“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.”

“I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.”

“But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without someone buoying them up.”

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

“This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.”

“Whenever something great happens, you’re always kind of poised for the universe to correct itself.”

“Reminds us that greatness lies even in the smallest of moments, in the humblest of hearts, and we shall, each of us, be called to greatness. Whether we shall rise to meet it or let it slip away is the challenge put before us all.”

“Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.”

“Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?”

“When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.”

“Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great. You have no power over me!”

“All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.”

“Ari smiled. The sun was shining, the weather was great, he was eating ice cream, and all his dreams were about to come true.”

“Why did you hit him? (Grace)
Because it gave me a great deal of pleasure. (Julian)
Nice. You haven’t seen me in what, two thousand years? So, instead of a friendly, brotherly hug, I get slugged. (Eros)”

“It was as if this night were only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a great arching line of which I couldn’t see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under cold, mindless stars.”

“But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.”

“It takes a great deal of courage and independence to decide to design your own image instead of the one that society rewards, but it gets easier as you go along.”

“I do not believe that grief is ever so great that it can not be contained within.”

“People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

“As for myself, I am splintered by great waves. I am coloured glass from a church window long since shattered. I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.”

“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”

“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”

“When we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.”

“There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths.”

“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”

“In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon…”

“Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way.”

“What is this Chocho business?' Will muttered to himself. But his friends overheard the comment.
'It's a term of great respect,' they chorused, and he glared at them.
'Oh, shut up,' he said.”

“remembering is a great invention of the mind, and if you try hard enough you can remember anything, whether it really happened or not.”

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

“Ringo: 'I had no schooling before I joined The Beatles and no schooling after The Beatles. Life is a great education.”

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

“So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastiness.”

“The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams.”

“Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.”

“Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble.”

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

“Hey," says Hayden, "I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate."
"Get lost," Roland tells him.
"Already am." And Hayden strolls away.”

“In case you're wondering, the underside of a sheep doesn't smell that great. Imagine a winter sweater that's been dragged through the mud and left in the laundry hamper for a week. Something like that.”

“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.”

“Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

“Then came the war, old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed to bear an enchanted life.”

“Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness. And they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy… or they become legend.”

“A great speech is literature.”

“I am a great believer that anything not expressly forbidden is explicitly allowed.”

“I worry about the men of your time, Grace. They all seem to be great fools. (Julian)”

“Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.”

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”

“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”

“Life is absolutely insane. Yes, life is insane but the great wisdom lies in choosing your insanity wisely.”

“Only two things can reveal life's great secrets: suffering and love.”

“Good and great are seldom in the same man.”

“The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.”

“I love Nudge, Nudge is a great kid, but that motormouth of hers could
have turned Mother Teresa into an ax murderer”

“You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.”

“Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.”

“We are always in a hurry to be happy…; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.”

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”

“The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.”

“Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”

“As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.”

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes--will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”

“Because for all the changes, some things were immutable truths: friendship transcends all barriers, understanding trumps fear, and great power can always be surmounted by determination.”

“Greatness is a property for which no man can receive credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.”

“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.”

“And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?”

“The thing about grown ups is that they're always wanting you to be this Great Hero and Leader. What's wrong with being NORMAL, for Thor's sake? What's wrong with just being SO-SO at stuff? They're just totally unrealistic…”

“I am Oz, the Great and Terrible,"
spoke the Beast, in a voice that was one great roar.
Who are you, and why do you seek me?”

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

“Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”

“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.”

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”

“There was a man who was worthless, and knew he was worthless, and yet however far down he tried to sink his soul, there was always some part of him capable of great action.”

“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”

“That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.”

“A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.”

“When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.”

“Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.”

“There's no great loss without some small gain.”

“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”

“A slow smile had curved St. Vincent's lips. 'Wives are a different case altogether. They require a great deal of effort but the rewards are substantial. I highly recommend wives. Especially one's own.”

“I go to seek a great perhaps”

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”

“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy.”

“Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.”

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”

“Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, 'Open up, your best friend is here.' On the other hand, it could have been, 'America is a great country because of canned ravioli.”

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”

“When you possess great treasures within you and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”

“No, I don't think I could fall in love with him, handsome though he is, because I don't accept any of that huff he gives me about my great beauty and all that. I'd have to trust a man's words before I could love him. I think.”

“It was because a great-looking man with no apparent mental defects found her attractive. Imagine feeling so buoyant over something so juvenile.”

“A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.”

“I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and
difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.”

“In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.”

“The beauty of nature has been one of the great inspirations in my life.”

“Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.”