Quotes about greatness
page 5

“A great memory does not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called grammar.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Discourse VIII, pt. 10.
The Idea of a University (1873)

“Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life… I have put only my talent into my works.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Life

“I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Suffering

“Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new-create another heir
As great in admiration as herself.”

William Shakespeare Henry VIII

Source: Henry VIII

Peace, Bird, Sleep

“Greatness depends on where you are coming from.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Half of a Yellow Sun

Source: Half of a Yellow Sun

Dependency

“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

Literature, Birth, Reading

“I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as a Beethoven symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Bone Palace Ballet

Bird, Forgetting

“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158
Source: 1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

Stupidity, Democracy, Nature, Thinking

“Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Truth, Sun

“We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Problem

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false <br class="br">1880s

Men, Dreams, Hope, Spring

“What I condemn are our system of values and the men who don't acknowledge how great, difficult, but ultimately beautiful women's share in society is.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Women, Men, Beauty

“The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Nature, Thinking, Victory

“Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Learning

“Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches
Context: Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Motivational, Sense

“Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

What the Germans lack, 2; also in The Antichrist, Sec. 60, and Gay Science, Sec. 147
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Alcohol

“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Works of Samuel Johnson

Passion

“Witches aren’t like that. We live in harmony with the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it’s wicked of them to say we don’t. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Nature

“The mind that engages in subjects of too great variety becomes confused and weakened.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Trotzky's Diary in Exile — 1935 (1958)
Source: Diary in Exile, 1935

Life, Idea, Personality

“It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Speed

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

God, Time

“The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: The Burning Secret and other stories

Love, Disappointment, History, Heart

“It takes a great man to be a good listener.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

For Men

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly

Thinking

“We all give up great expectations along the way.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Way

“The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods… the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195).

If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.”

Carol Gilligan (1936) American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

Life, World, Dreams, Failure

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

Oscar Wilde book The Decay of Lying

The Decay of Lying (1889)

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Linda
Source: Death of a Salesman (1949)

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Beauty, Beauty, Art, Gratitude

“It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risk everything.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

For Men, Parting

“Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Life, Death

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

Men

“I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pleasure, Reading, Dead

“To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Variant: To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
Source: Discours de réception, Séance De L'académie Française (introductory speech at a session of the French Academy), 24th December 1896, on Ferdinand de Lesseps' work on the Suez Canal.
Context: To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Success, Motivational, Deep, love

“… to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.”

Eve Ensler book The Vagina Monologues

Source: The Vagina Monologues

Hunger, Pain, Loneliness

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

World, Solitude, Perfection

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.
Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
Variant: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Context: We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.

For Men, World, Passion

“…because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Be not afraid of greatness.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Life is a great big canvas. Throw all the paint you can at it.”

James Patterson book Sam's Letters to Jennifer

Source: Sam's Letters to Jennifer

Cute, Life, Painting

“We lose a great deal, I think, when we lose this sense and feeling for the sun. When all has been said, the adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on natures's sustaining and poetic spirit.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Sense

“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.(mother Teresa)”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Life, Graduation, Wedding, Love

“The great commandment is that we preach the gospel to every creature, but neither God nor the Bible says anything about forcing it down people's throats.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

God, People

“The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Problem, Time

“It's a great game - the pursuit of happiness.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

Game, Happiness

“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, History, Evil

“The product of paper and printed ink, that we commonly call the book, is one of the great visible mediators between spirit and time, and, reflecting zeitgeist, lasts as long as ore and stone.”

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Books, Time

“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

--From the poem "Elm", written 19 April 1962”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Fear

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Nature

“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe that truth and justice are fundamental to an enduring social order.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond, that character—not wealth or power or position—is of supreme worth.

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

I believe in an all-wise and all-loving God, named by whatever name, and that the individual's highest fulfillment, greatest happiness and widest usefulness are to be found in living in harmony with His will.

I believe that love is the greatest thing in the world; that it alone can overcome hate; that right can and will triumph over might.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Love, Life, God, Hate

“Sorrow comes in great waves… but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Strong

“What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.”

Walter Isaacson book Steve Jobs

Source: Steve Jobs

“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Writer's Diary

Change

“We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Wealth

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”

Stephen King book It

Variant: And almost idly, in a kind of sidethought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Source: It (1986)

Truth, Childhood

“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: Voyage of the Beagle

Law, Nature

“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”

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

Stupidity, World, Fear

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

Books, Drink, Water, Wine

“I must say… that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Madness

“A great artist is never poor.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

“Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Men, Pleasure

“We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

As quoted in B. F. Skinner : The Man and His Ideas (1968) by Richard Isadore Evans, p. 73.
Context: We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

Love, Books, Reading

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us?" (1897)

“Making others happy, through kindness of speech and sincerity of right advice, is a sign of true greatness. To hurt another soul by sarcastic words, looks, or suggestions, is despicable.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Source: Where There is Light: Insight and Inspiration for Meeting Life's Challenges

Soul, Hurt, Sincerity, Happiness

“All great and precious things are lonely.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Time

“Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love, Feeling, Lovers

“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

Men, Horse

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Faith, Thinking

“He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest — he had seen beautiful things and horrible things — but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Beauty

“One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains to learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Pain, Learning

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Life, Joy, Happiness

“I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers…”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Love

“It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Berkeley, CA http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (1911) <br class="br">1910s

“Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We’re so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Which is to say, beauty is in and of itself a great and glorious good, something we need in large and daily doses.”

Stasi Eldredge

Source: Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

Beauty, Nature

“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 1, chapter 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845)
Variant: To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Knowledge

“Kennedy was not impressed by military objections. The Bay of Pigs had taught the President to distrust the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The first advice I’m going to give my successor,” he once said to his journalist friend Ben Bradlee, “is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”4 During the missile crisis Kennedy courteously and consistently rejected the Joint Chiefs’ bellicose recommendations. “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor,” he said. “If we…do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”5”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Source: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Men, Feeling

“It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Men, Thinking

“I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

God, Fools

“Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Critic as Artist

Men, Books

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Success, Graduation, Success

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Hope

“Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

God, Faith, Religion, Thinking

“The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to the Editor, Dublin Daily Express (27 February 1895)

Mood, Passion, Heart

“Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity… and here I am, reborn.”

Witold Gombrowicz book Ferdydurke

Source: Ferdydurke

Stupidity, Perfection

“Some people say great God come from the sky take away everything and make everybody feel high, but if you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Get Up, Stand Up (cowritten with Peter Tosh), from the album Burnin (1973)
Song lyrics

Life, God, People, Feeling

“Love and magic have a great deal in common. they enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Love, Soul, Heart

“Success has always been a great liar”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Success, Success

“Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

People, Personality

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Men, World, Time, Dependency

“All great ideas are dangerous.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Idea

“Stay away from people who belittle your ambition, small people do that, but great people make you like to be great!”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

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.

People

Quotes about greatness page 5

Quotes about greatness
page 5