Greatness quotes
1.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside greatness — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin-it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen-and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him."
"The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious."
"Well might the ancients make silence a god; for it is the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness,--at once the source and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends."
"We observe with confidence that the truly strong mind, view it as intellect or morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here the sign of health is unconsciousness."
"Go ahead, do something impossible."
"True greatness, first of all, is a thing of the heart. It is alive with robust and generous sympathies. It is neither behind its age nor too far before it. It is up with its age, and ahead of it only just so far as to be able to lead its march. It cannot slumber, for activity is a necessity of its existence. It is no reservoir, but a fountain."
"Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be."
"Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness.If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you."
"Friendship's the privilege of private men; for wretched greatness knows no blessing so substantial."
"In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them."
"One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals."
"You can disagree without being disagreeable."
"You need aspiration if you want to really achieve greatness in this world."
"Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude."
"All great men are partially inspired."
"No man was ever great without divine inspiration. [Lat., Nemo vir magnus aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.]"
"This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and in every state of fortune not to depart from an upright, virtuous conduct."
"Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he or she is in. That person must reflect what is projected upon him or her."
"A great ship asks deep water."
"There would be no great ones, if there were no little ones."
