Quotes about greatness
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“Our great human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.”

Tom Robbins book Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Source: Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Life, Soul, Light

“I'm putting up a great front, then because I feel like I'm breaking apart inside.”

Christine Feehan book Dark Prince

Source: Dark Prince

Feeling

“A great deal of the chaos in the world occurs because people don't appreciate themselves.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Source: Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

People, World

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Women, Friendship, Tea

“It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

“Great, they give blind kids guns," I said, trying to lessen his horror. "I don't even let Iggy have a gun. Usually.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

“One thing about great art: it made you love people more, forgive them their petty transgressions. It worked in the way that religion was supposed to, if you thought about it.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

Love, People, Religion, Art

“To see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line…. That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Source: Birds of Heaven

Hell, Perfection, Madness

“A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Feeling, Sense

“All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation

Pain

“Still, it would have been great, just once, to have a man stare at her with total adoration. To have him be… enthralled. Yes, that was the word. She would have loved for a man to be enthralled by her.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love

“We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware – beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.”

Kent Nerburn (1946) Author

Source: Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis

Thinking

“Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact

God

“Great. Now I have to go back and tell Haymitch I want an eighty-year-old and Nuts and Volts for my allies. He'll love that.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Love

“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.”

Christopher Hitchens Mortality

Source: Mortality

Education

“Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Faith, Thinking

“Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Age

“Damn you, Sassenach!" his voice said, from a very great distance. His voice was choked with passion. "Dam you! I swear if ye die on me, I'll kill you!”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Passion

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People, Music

“I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”

Martin Buber book I and Thou

I and Thou (1923)

Animals

“The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 29

Error, Future

“You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Way

“Don't you long for something different to happen, something so exciting and new it carries you along with it like a great tide, something that lets your life blaze and burn so the whole world can see it?”

Juliet Marillier book Son of the Shadows

Source: Son of the Shadows

Life, World

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Widely attributed to Shaw begin31 (187ning in the 1940s, esp. after appearing in the November 1942 Reader’s Digest, the quotation is actually a variant of "Indeed, in many respects, she [Mrs. Otis] was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language" from Oscar Wilde's 1887 short story "The Canterville Ghost".
Misattributed
Variant: The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language.

Country

“I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Dreams, Thinking, Chance, Reading

“What a great thing, to be loved! What a greater thing still, to love! The heart becomes heroic though passion…if no one loved, the sun would go out.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Love, Passion, Sun, Heart

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 14 (p. 137)

Beauty, Peaceful, Peace, Learning

“It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it and it's usually crucifixion.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Courageous, Truth, Courage, Time

“She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Story of Us

Love, Books, Way, Girl

“Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16
Source: Brave New World (1932)
Context: I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.

Truth, Beauty, Universe, Happiness

“The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Dreams, Happiness

“My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

People, Idea

“She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy.

I do have a knack for finding great women.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Women, Way, Happiness

“There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned. On it was but one word, DRACULA.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.”

Sigmund Freud Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Source: Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

Problem, Decision, Solitude

“Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

Religion

“Great beauty is often perceived by human senses as pain.”

Susan Kay (1952) British writer

Pain, Beauty, Sense

“This is a great idea,” said Trey. “You kids should totaly go see that play. Make a whole day of it. Grab some dinner and hang out at the library or whatever it is you do for fun.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Idea

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality" says Iris Murdoch.
But given the state of the world, is it wise?”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

Life, World, Reality

“When God wants to make a mushroom, he does it overnight, but when He wants to make a giant oak, He takes a hundred years. Great souls are grown through struggles and storms and seasons of suffering. Be patient with the process.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Soul, Suffering, Season

“[Knowing how to suffer without complaining is the only practical thing, it's the great science, the lesson to learn, the solution to the problem of life. ]”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

Life, Problem, Suffering, Learning

“Like all Herondales, his ability to love without measure, without end, was both his great gift and his great curse.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Lost Herondale

Love

“There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. People so tired, mutilated either by love or no love.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Loneliness, World, People, Love

“The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

People, Thinking

“Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

People, Light, Heart, Despair

“In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Life, Gratitude

“My first kiss and I'm comatose. Great.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Secret Vampire

Kiss

“Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Dogs

“We can get you a throne with snakes. I’ll stand next to you and roar at anybody who fails to grovel. Fear Kate Daniels. She is a mighty and terrible ruler. Grendel can anoint the petitioners with his vomit. It’ll be great…”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Fear

“To make great art, you had to expose your soul, and some things should be left safely in the dark.”

Patricia Briggs book Hunting Ground

Source: Hunting Ground

Art, Soul

“Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Phythagoras, the other the division of a line in extreme and mean ratio. The first we can compare to a mass of gold; the other we may call a precious jewel.”

Johannes Kepler book Mysterium Cosmographicum

As quoted by Karl Fink, Geschichte der Elementar-Mathematik (1890) translated as A Brief History of Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=3hkPAAAAIAAJ (1900, 1903) by Wooster Woodruff Beman, David Eugene Smith. Also see Carl Benjamin Boyer, A History of Mathematics (1968). Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)

“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”

Maya Angelou book Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Love, Life, Pleasure, World

“When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things - not the great occasions - give off the greatest glow of happiness.”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

Christmas, Past, Christmas, Happiness

“So, great. This is Camp…what do you call it? Camp Fish-Blood?”
Aphros frowned. “I hope that was a joke. This is Camp __________.” He made a sound that was a series of sonar pings and hisses.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Hope, Fish

“If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work.”

Beryl Markham book West with the Night

Source: West with the Night

Light

“Let's be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

“You got guts taking that tone with me. (Nykyrian)
What you gonna do, oh great wounded one? I’m the one with the injector. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

“In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Love, Life

“To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Love, Gratitude

“Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Water, Time

“Did I hurt you in the parking lot?"
"No, m'lady. I fell, so I could put a tracker on your car."
Great.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Fate's Edge

Cars, Hurt

“They say - "they" being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can't just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times.”

Jennifer Weiner book Good in Bed

Source: Good in Bed

Time

“Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.”

Neal Shusterman book Everwild

Source: Everwild

World, Loss

“Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Life, Boy, Time

“Great. She shook her head. Not only am I having conversations with myself, but now I'm refusing to talk to me. This has got to be the first sign of madness.”

Trudi Canavan book The High Lord

Source: The High Lord

Madness

“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in FBI Memo, February 13, 1950 (item 61-4099-25 in Einstein's FBI file—viewable online as p. 72 of "Albert Einstein Part 1 of 14" here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein, as well as p. 72 of the pdf file which can be downloaded here http://vault.fbi.gov/Albert%20Einstein/Albert%20Einstein%20Part%201%20of%2014/at_download/file). There is no other information in the FBI's released files as to what source attributed this statement to Einstein, and the files are full of falsehoods, including the accusation that Einstein was secretly pro-communist, when in fact he was openly so Albert Einstein#Vierick Interview (1929) Disputed Context: In December, 1947, he made the following statement: "I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life."

Freedom, Country

“Nor did I make any distinctions between great literature and any other kind. I just liked reading.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Literature, Reading

“I hopehaven't given up on the S. Q.'s of the world, Reynie. As you see, there are a great many sheep in wolves' clothing. If not for S. Q.'s good nature, we'd never have escaped.”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

World, Nature, Clothes

“[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"

(, interview with Budd Mishkin;, March 25, 2007.)”

David Halberstam (1934–2007) American writer, journalist, historian

Source: Everything They Had: Sports Writing

Love, Feeling, Quotes

“Being sixteen forever sounded good until you really thought about it. Then it didn't seem like such a great prospect.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

God, Memory, Joy

“Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled.”

Frederic Raphael (1931) British writer

“There are things of such darkness and horror—just, I suppose, as there are things of such great beauty—that they will not fit through the puny human doors of perception.”

Stephen King book Skeleton Crew

Source: Skeleton Crew

Beauty

“A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

People, Sleep, Madness

“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Intelligence

“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

'Notes On Journalism' http://books.google.com/books?id=52L2eI9mwlcC&q=&quot;No+one+in+this+world+so+far+as+I+know+and+I+have+searched+the+record+for+years+and+employed+agents+to+help+me+has+ever+lost+money+by+underestimating+the+intelligence+of+the+great+masses+of+the+plain+people&quot;&pg=PA28#v=onepage in the Chicago Tribune ( 19 September 1926 http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1926/09/19/page/87/article/notes-on-journalism) The first sentence is often paraphrased as "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." (The Yale Book of Quotations, 2006, p. 512) 1920s Source: Gist of Mencken

Money, People, World, Intelligence

“I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.”

Margaret Atwood book The Penelopiad

Source: The Penelopiad

Sex, Thinking