Greatness Quotes - Page 14

• Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

  Joseph Addison

  Party, Character, Opportunity

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.46

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• It is unavoidable that if we learn more about a great man's life, we shall also hear of occasions on which he has done no better than we, and has in fact come nearer to us as a human being.

  Sigmund Freud

  Men, Done, Facts

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• Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison". Book by Deborah Headstrom-Page, 2007.

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• The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest.

  Margot Asquith

  Confused, Taken, Self

  Margot Asquith (1963). “Autobiography”

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• A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Mind, Generations, Great Person

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• I don't know what motivated the artist, which means that the paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension,' the thing that makes great works of art great.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Mean, Thinking

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• Nothing is as uplifting as standing before a great painting whether it was painted in 1505 or last Tuesday.

  Charles Saatchi

  Uplifting, Tuesday, Lasts

  Charles Saatchi (2009). “My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic”, Phaidon Press

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• Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought.

  Cleopatra

  Known

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• Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Art, Past, Doe

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• Difficulty is a nurse of greatness-a harsh nurse, who rocks her foster children roughly, but rocks them in strength and athletic proportion. The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness.

  Kobe Bryant

  Children, Wrestling, Rocks

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• The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation.

  George Inness

  Art, Force, Impression

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• All great art is an imperfect, halting attempt to catch up upon life.

  John Edgar Park

  Art, Imperfect, Great Art

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• They say greatness skips a generation, but I think that's because the generation before helps too much.

  Nick Simmons

  Thinking, Generations, Too Much

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• True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Sovereign, Virtue, Deceived

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1891). “Lamartine's Works ...”

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• The age does not believe in great men, because it does not possess any.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Believe, Men, Age

  Benjamin Disraeli (1863). “Coningsby, Or, The New Generation”, p.88

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• Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.

  Jonathan Swift

  Painful, Neighbor, Owners

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: with copious notes and additions and a memoir of the author”, p.145

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• The great men of earth are the shadow men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Air, Voice

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• The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness--Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Action, Moral, Luther

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1851). “Literature and life, lects”, p.86

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• Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Men, Pay

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.50

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• Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Too Much, Reason

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.373

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• 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.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Guilty, He Man

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1855). “Cicero's Three books of offices, or moral duties: also his Cato Major, an essay on old age; Lælius, an essay on friendship; Paradoxes; Scipio's dream; and Letter to Quintus on the duties of a magistrate”, p.42

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• The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Men, Humanity, Earth

  Giuseppe Mazzini (1891). “Critical and literary”

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• A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.

  Joseph Addison

  Soul, Looks, Neglect

  Joseph Addison (1721). “The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq”, p.256

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• 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.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Strong, Views, Mind

  Thomas Carlyle (1881). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished”, p.4

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• It is to be lamented that great characters are seldom without a blot.

  George Washington

  Character, Great Character

  George Washington, Stephen Lucas (1999). “The Quotable George Washington: The Wisdom of an American Patriot”, p.14, Rowman & Littlefield

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