Greatness

"The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments."

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there … in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there … in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there … in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

"This is the bare chronology of as great an American as ever lived. Ten thousand pages would be required to fill in the full story of his talents, his genius and his impact upon the foundation of America. He was ever the subject of white-heat controversy—in death even as in life. But for myself, summing it all up, I say that five words might be his epitaph: THE REPUBLIC IS HIS MONUMENT."

"There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help."

"High stations, tumult, but not bliss, create; None think the great unhappy, but the great."

"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."

"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."

"We have not the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness."

"Nemo vir magnus aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit."

"The great man who thinks greatly of himself, is not diminishing that greatness in heaping fuel on his fire."

"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."

"He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others."

"Nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul."

"He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind."

"No really great man ever thought himself so."

"Ajax the great * * * Himself a host."

"For he that once is good, is ever great."

"Urit enim fulgore suo qui prægravat artes Intra se positas; extinctus amabitur idem."

"Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand, And leaves, for fortune's ice, vertue's firme land."

"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?"

"Il n'appartient qu'aux grands hommes d'avoir de grands défauts."

"The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand."

"Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God."

"A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions."

"If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both."

"The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart."

"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."

"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."

"Lives obscurely great."

"Les grands ne sont grands que parceque nous sommes à genoux: relevons nous."

"Es ist der Fluch der Hohen, dass die Niedern Sich ihres offnen Ohrs bemächtigen."

"Si vir es, suspice, etiam si decidunt, magna conantes."

"Not that the heavens the little can make great, But many a man has lived an age too late."

"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent."

"The world knows nothing of its greatest men."

"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."

"O, happy they that never saw the court, Nor ever knew great men but by report!"

"Great let me call him, for he conquered me."

"The greatest man is he who chooses the right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heavest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering."

"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the using of strength."

"True greatness does not consist so much in doing extraordinary things, as in conducting ordinary affairs with a noble demeanor and from a right motive. It is necessary and most profitable to remember the advice to Titus, "Showing all good fidelity in all things.""

"A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness."

"He who does the most good is the greatest man. Power, authority, dignity; honors, wealth, and station,— these are so far valuable as they put it into the hands of men to be more exemplary and more useful than they could be in an obscure and private life. But then these are means conducting to an end, and that end is goodness."

"A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends."

"It is, in a great measure, by raising up and endowing great minds that God secures the advance of human affairs, and the accomplishment of His own plans on earth."