Great Men Quotes - Page 18

• Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .

  Mario Puzo

  Greatness, Men, Hollywood Life

  Mario Puzo (2005). “The Godfather”, p.168, Penguin

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wanted to lie hour after hour on a couch, pouring out the dark, secret places of my heart--do this feeling that over my shoulder sat humanity and wisdom and generosity, a munificent heart--do this until that incredibly lovely day when the great man would say to me, his voice grave and dramatic with discovery: "This is you, Exley. Rise and go back into the world a whole man.

  Frederick Exley

  Lying, Heart, Dark

  Frederick Exley (1997). “A Fan's Notes”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Booker T. Washington

  Book, Men, Equal

  Booker T. Washington (1972). “Papers: The Autobiographical Writings”, p.242, University of Illinois Press

  102 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession.

  Clarice Lispector

  Men, Needs, Praise

  7 Copy quote

• Great crises produce great men, and great deeds of courage.

  John F. Kennedy

  Being Strong, Greatness, Men

  "Profiles In Courage".

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Men, Atheism

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.96, Atlantic Books Ltd

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Greatness, Men

  Intentions "The Critic as Artist" pt. 1 (1891)

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.

  Max Brooks

  Men, Great Times, Knows

  Max Brooks (2006). “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”, p.151, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Like Family, Baudelaire

  David Paul, Charles Baudelaire (1996). “Poison and vision: poems and prose of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud”, Univ of Salzberg Pr

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Strong, Men, Order

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2013). “Democracy in America -”, p.340, Read Books Ltd

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.

  Boris Pasternak

  Mother, Children, Men

  4 Copy quote

• You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Atheist, Men, Important

  Telephone Remarks to a Group of Boy Scouts: "What it Means to Be a Boy Scout", July 25, 1924.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Thinking, Sorrow

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jessie Coulson (2008). “Crime and Punishment”, p.254, Oxford University Press

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Men, Average, Civilization

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.33, Virginia Woolf

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs.

  Daniel Keyes

  Men, Dedication, Important

  Daniel Keyes (2007). “Flowers for Algernon”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we'd all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn't be even a single great man.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Brother, Men, Prejudice

  4 Copy quote

• She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.

  Thomas Hardy

  Family, Mother, Party

  Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brontë (2016). “Classic British Love Stories: Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Jane Eyre”, p.1025, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Denys (Finch-Hatton) has been written about before and he will be written about again. If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; he was a great man who never achieved arrogance.

  Beryl Markham

  Greatness, Men, Arrogance

  McDougal, Beryl Markham (1997). “West with the Night”, McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Sweet, Greatness, Men

  71 Copy quote

• Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Mother, Husband, Father

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Gaudy Night”, p.71, Open Road Media

  80 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great men cultivate love and only little men cherish a spirit of hatred; assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

  Booker T. Washington

  Strong, Men, Giving

  Booker T. Washington (2013). “The Booker T. Washington Reader”, p.81, Simon and Schuster

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.

  Edith Hamilton

  Men, Greek, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Liars, Artist, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.408, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't say he's a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

  Arthur Miller

  Dog, Fall, Character

  Death of a Salesman (1949) act 1

  7 Copy quote

  Show source