Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Greatness
Burn to be great,
Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone.
The plains are everlasting as the hills,
The bard cannot have two pursuits; aught else
Comes on the mind with the like shock as though
Two worlds had gone to war, and met in air.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. Home.
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,—
To which I leave him.
Beaumont and Fletcher—The False One. Act II. Sc. 1.
Man’s Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
Carlyle—Sartor Resartus. The Everlasting Yea. Bk. II. Ch. IX.
We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness.
Carlyle—Essays. Characteristics. Vol. III.
Nemo vir magnus aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.
No man was ever great without divine inspiration.
Cicero—De Natura Deorum. II. 66.
The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. XV.
So let his name through Europe ring!
A man of mean estate,
Who died as firm as Sparta’s king,
Because his soul was great.
Sir Francis Hastings Doyle—The Private of the Buffs.
No great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
George Eliot—The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. I. 56th line from end.
He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.
Emerson—Essays. Second Series. Uses of Great Men.
Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul.
Emerson—Uses of Great Men.
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
Hazlitt—Table Talk. Whether Genius is Conscious of its own Power.
No really great man ever thought himself so.
Hazlitt—Table Talk. Whether Genius is Conscious of its own Power.
Ajax the great***
Himself a host.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. III. L. 293. Pope’s trans.
For he that once is good, is ever great.
Ben Jonson—The Forest. To Lady Aubigny.
Urit enim fulgore suo qui prægravat artes
Intra se positas; extinctus amabitur idem.
That man scorches with his brightness, who overpowers inferior capacities, yet he shall be revered when dead.
Horace—Epistles. II. 1. 13.
Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves, for fortune’s ice, vertue’s firme land.
Richard Knolles—Turkish History. Under a portrait of Mustapha I. L. 13.
Great is advertisement! ’tis almost fate;
But, little mushroom-men, of puff-ball fame.
Ah, do you dream to be mistaken great
And to be really great are just the same?
Richard Le Gallienne—Alfred Tennyson.
Il n’appartient qu’aux grands hommes d’avoir de grands défauts.
It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.
La Rochefoucauld—Maximes.
The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand.
Gerald Stanley Lee—Crowds. Bk. II. Ch. XV.
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God.
Longfellow—Kavanagh. Ch. I.
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
Lowell—My Study Windows. Garfield.
The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.
Mencius—Works. Bk. IV. Pt. II. Ch. XII.
That man is great, and he alone,
Who serves a greatness not his own,
For neither praise nor pelf:
Content to know and be unknown:
Whole in himself.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—A Great Man.
Are not great
Men the models of nations?
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto VI. St. 29.
Les grands ne sont grands que parceque nous, les portons sur nos épaules; nous n’avons qu’ à les secouer pour en joncher la terre.
The great are only great because we carry them on our shoulders; when we throw them off they sprawl on the ground.
Montandré—Point de l’Ovale.
Lives obscurely great.
Henry J. Newboldt—Minora Sidera.
Les grands ne sont grands que parceque nous sommes à genoux: relevons nous.
The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise up.
Prud’homme—Révolutions de Paris. Motto.
As if Misfortune made the throne her seat,
And none could be unhappy but the great.
Nicholas Rowe—Fair Penitent. Prolog.
Es ist der Fluch der Hohen, dass die Niedern
Sich ihres offnen Ohrs bemächtigen.
The curse of greatness:
Ears ever open to the babbler’s tale.
Schiller—Die Braut von Messina. I.
Si vir es, suspice, etiam si decidunt, magna conantes.
If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.
Seneca—De Brevitate. XX.
Greatness knows itself.
Henry IV. Pt. I. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 74.
I have touched the highest point of all my greatness:
And, from that full meridian of my glory,
I haste now to my setting.
Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 223.
Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 351.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Julius Cæsar. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 135.
Are yet two Romans living such as these?
The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!
Julius Cæsar. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 98.
But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
Nature and Fortune join’d to make thee great.
King John. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 51.
Your name is great
In mouths of wisest censure.
Othello. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 192.
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 259.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
Twelfth Night. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 157.
Not that the heavens the little can make great,
But many a man has lived an age too late.
R. H. Stoddard—To Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Swift—Thoughts on Various Subjects.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
Henry Taylor—Philip Van Artevelde. Act I. Sc. 5.
He fought a thousand glorious wars,
And more than half the world was his,
And somewhere, now, in yonder stars,
Can tell, mayhap, what greatness is.
Thackeray—The Chronicle of the Drum. Last verse.
O, happy they that never saw the court,
Nor ever knew great men but by report!
John Webster—The White Devil; or, Vittoria Corombona. Act V. Sc. VI.
Great let me call him, for he conquered me.
Young—The Revenge. Act I. Sc. 1.
High stations, tumult, but not bliss, create;
None think the great unhappy, but the great.
Young—Love of Fame. Satire I. L. 237.