Great Men Quotes - Page 28

• Measured by any standard, white or black, Washington must be regarded today as one of the great men of this country: and in the future he will be so honored.

  Ray Stannard Baker

  Country, Black And White, Men

  Ray Stannard Baker (1908). “Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citizenship in the American Democracy”

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• God had no children too weak, but a great many too strong to make use of.

  Dwight L. Moody

  Strong, Children, Inspiration

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• There seem to me a great many blessings which come from true poverty and I should be sorry to be deprived of them.

  Teresa of Avila

  Sorry, Blessing, Poverty

  Saint Teresa (of Avila) (1972). “General introduction. Life. Spiritual relations”

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• Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Mind, Needs

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.114, Modern Library

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• I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Stories, Crafts

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• A truly great man never puts away the simplicity of a child.

  Confucius

  Children, Father, Men

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• We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Punishment, Ideas, Eugenics

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• A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Land, Eugenics, People

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• Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to take its place. Eliminate a great many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay.

  E. O. Wilson

  Nature, Animal, Ecosystems

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• Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people's curiosity. It is enough to open minds; do not overload them. Put there just a spark. If there is some good inflammable stuff, it will catch fire.

  Anatole France

  Teaching, Fire, Vanity

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• Adversity toughens manhood, and the characteristic of the good or the great man is not that he has been exempt from the evils of life, but that he has surmounted them.

  Patrick Henry

  Adversity, Men, Evil

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• Great men wait for the right moment to abandon caution. The rest of us abandon it when impatience becomes too much for us.

  Mason Cooley

  Patience, Men, Waiting

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• I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  America, Democracy, Ancient

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• Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Men, Two, Quality

  "The Shah's Story". Book by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, p. 144, 1980.

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• Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached, but great men resemble them not in this particular.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Men, Greatness, Mountain

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• It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.

  Seneca the Younger

  Wise, Men, Long

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• A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.

  C. S. Lewis

  Song, Sleep, Thinking

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• No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Country, Men, May

  "The Complete Writings of Lord Macaulay, vol. 17". Book by Thomas Babington Macaulay Baron Macaulay, p. 14, speech on parliamentary reform (March 2, 1831), 1900.

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• I can assure you that there is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. You learn that which is of inestimable importance that there are a great many people in the world who are just as clever as you are. You learn to put your trust, by and by, in an economy and frugality of the exercise of your powers, both moral and intellectual; and you very soon find out, if you have not found it out before, that patience and tenacity of purpose are worth more than twice their weight of cleverness.

  Thomas Huxley

  Clever, Exercise, People

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1900). “Collected Essays”

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• Great men should not have great faults.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Greatness, Men, Faults

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• I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great many words of two dead languages, which nobody living knows perfectly, and which are of no use in the common intercourse of life. Useful knowledge, in my opinion, consists of modern languages, history, and geography; some Latin may be thrown into the bargain, in compliance with custom, and for closet amusement.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Education, Country, Latin

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• Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Character, Men, Greed

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Eugenia Stanhope (1827). “Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son”, p.355

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• When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Grief, Heart, Men

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• It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Passion, Past, Men

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Love Is, Men, Misunderstood

  Entry for May 27, 1849, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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