Quotes About Greatness

Thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me -- to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always care-ingly.

Thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me - to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always caringly.

He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.

I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth, and the greatness of his fall.

Never defend yourself. Make no excuse. Defensiveness and excuses are unbecoming to you. Smoothly recognize your wrong, apologize, and give thanks to God. Then you will be evaluated as a great person. The more you run away, the smaller you become. How dare you transfer your responsibility to others! A great person is one who can take all the responsibility alone.

There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.   —Nelson Mandela

If you attend a meeting of evolutionary biologists somewhere in America, you might be lucky and spot a tall, gray-whiskered, smiling man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, standing rather diffidently at the back of the crowd. He will probably be surrounded by a knot of admirers, hanging on his every word—for he is a man of few words. A whisper will go around the room: "George is here." You will sense from people's reactions the presence of greatness.

Let your life be guided by greatness

She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth . . . To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his... A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience . . . and the desire would never be satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness.

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness.

She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth.

A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom"—this

No matter how hard a struggle he had lived through in the past, he had never reached the ultimate ugliness of abandoning the will to act. In moments of suffering, he had never let pain win its one permanent victory: he had never allowed it to make him lose the desire for joy. He had never doubted the nature of the world or man's greatness as its motive power and its core.

Both of them smiled derisively. But Francisco seemed to laugh at things because he saw something much greater. Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great.

He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great.

It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

Don't despise the middleman. He's necessary. Someone had to tell them. It takes two to make a very good career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.

Greatness is achieved by the productive effort of a man's mind in the pursuit of clearly defined, rational goals. But a delusion of grandeur can be served only by the switching, undefinable chimera of a public monument—which is presented as a munificent gift to the victims whose forced labor or extorted money had paid for it—which is dedicated to the service of all and none, owned by all and none, gaped at by all and enjoyed by none.

I like to see a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper,' he said. 'It makes him no bigger than an ant - isn't that the correct bromide for the occasion? The God-damn fools! It's man who made it - the whole incredible mass of stone and steel. It doesn't dwarf him, it makes him greater than the structure. It reveals his true dimensions to the world. What we love about these buildings, Dominique, is the creative faculty, the heroic in man.

You know, I'm not any kind of a great man. I couldn't have built that railroad. If it goes, I won't be able to bring it back. I'll have to go with it. . . .

What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn

He said that architecture was truly the greatest of the arts, because it was anonymous, as all greatness. He said that the world had many famous buildings, but few renowned builders, which was as it should be, since no one man had ever created anything of importance in architecture, or elsewhere, for that matter.

When I look at the ocean, I feel the greatness of man. I think of man's magnificent capacity that created this ship to conquer all that senseless space. When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite. When I look at the planets, I think of airplanes.