Great Throughts Treasury

"No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines greatness." - Charles Kendall Adams

"Not being always able to follow others exactly, nor attain to the excellence of those he imitates, a prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it." -

"People are much greater and stronger than we imagine, and when unexpected tragedy comes we see them often grow to a stature that is far beyond anything we imagined. We must remember that people are capable of greatness, of courage, but not in isolation. They need the conditions of solidly linked human unit in which everyone is prepared to bear the burden of others." - Anthony of Sourozh, fully Archbishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh NULL

"No man has become to true greatness who has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to his race, and that what God gives him he gives him for mankind." - Phillips Brooks

"Everything here, but the soul of man, is a passing shadow. The only enduring substance is within. When shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destines of the immortal soul?" - William Ellery Channing

"It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"Religious faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is, instead, an inner spiritual strength which enables them to face those storms with hope and serenity. Religious faith has the miraculous power to lift ordinary human beings to greatness in seasons of stress." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps." - Euripedes NULL

"It has always seemed to me that ruthlessness and arrogant self-confidence constitute the indispensable condition for what, when it succeeds, strike us as greatness. And I also believe that one ought to differentiate between greatness of achievement and greatest of personality." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The true greatness and the true happiness of a country consist in wisdom; in that enlarged an comprehensive wisdom which includes education, knowledge, religion, virtue, freedom, with every influence which advances and every institution which supports them." - Henry Giles

"One of the most melancholy things in the world is the enormous power for evil of the dead over things living. There is hardly a great painter or writer, or a man who had achieved greatness in any direction, whose name has not been used to repress rising genius." - John Alexander Hammerton, fully Sir John Alexander Hammerton

"We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"True greatness, first of all, is a thing of the heart. It is alive with robust and generous sympathies. It is neither behind its age nor too far before it. It is up with its age, and ahead of it only just so far as to be able to lead its march. It cannot slumber, for activity is a necessity of its existence. It is no reservoir, but a fountain." - Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

"We teach children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift." - Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL

"You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home - home to a Father’s house - to an eternal home?" -

"It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness, except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat." -

"Dreamers are the architects of greatness. Their brains have wrought all human miracles... only cowardice and lack of faith can keep the seeker from his chosen goal; but if his heart be strong and if he dream enough and dream it hard enough, he can attain, no matter where men failed before." - Herbert Kaufman

"Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten... America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"That is not faith, to see God only in what is strange and rare; but this is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple, to know God's greatness not so much from disorder as from order, not so much from those strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break His laws, as from those common ones in which He fulfills His laws." - Charles Kingsley

"By your friends I gauge your wealth; by your enemies, your greatness." - Judah Lazerov, fully Judah Leib Lazerov

"Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation, even though they cannot entirely keep to the tracks of others or emulate the prowess of their models. So a prudent man should always follow in the footsteps of great men and imitate those who have been outstanding. If his own prowess fails to compare with theirs, at least it has an air of greatness about it." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives man opportunity." - Lester Maddox, fully Lester Garfield Maddox

"Real education belongs to the future; most of our education is a form of tribal conditioning, a pilgrimage in routine and premature adjustment. When education stirs our innermost feelings and loyalties, when it awakens us from the slumber of lethargy, when it brings individuals together through understanding and compassion, it becomes our foremost hope for lasting greatness." - Frederick Mayer

"People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it." - Jane Porter

"We live in the midst of blessings, till we are utterly insensible to their greatness, and of the source from which they flow." - James Allan Park

"Wealth consists in talent, not in possessions; greatness, in understanding, not in age." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

"A sublime soul can rise to all kind of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

"It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

"The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual." - Charles Sumner

"The object of education is to give man the unity of truth... I believe in a spiritual world - not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God. Born in this great world, full of the mystery of the infinite, we cannot accept our existence as a momentary outburst of chance drifting on the current of matter toward an eternal nowhere. We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality." -

"It is important not to confuse stability with force, or the greatness of a thing with its duration." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"We may naturally believe that it is not the singular prosperity of the few, but the greater well-being of all that is most pleasing in the sight of the Creator and Preserver of men. What appears to me to be man’s decline, is His eye, advancement; what afflicts me is acceptable to Him. A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just: and its justice constitutes its greatness and its beauty. I would strive, then, to raise myself to this point of the divine contemplation and thence to view and judge the concerns of men." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"We have, I fear, confused power with greatness." - Stewart Udall, Fully Stewart Lee Udall

"Piety… respects the little – the little man, the little task, the little duty. Through the little, religion meets the greatness that lies behind." - Leo Baeck

"Doubt attracts “reasons” for not succeeding, whereas belief finds the means to do the job. Do not see yourself merely in terms of how you appear now. Absorbing the blows is a quality of greatness. Every big success is created one step at a time." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"Technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"The price of greatness is responsibility." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity." - James Fenimore Cooper

"Greatness is a matter not of size but of quality, and it is within the reach of every one of us. Greatness lies in the faithful performance of whatever duties life places upon us and in the generous performance of the small acts of kindness that God has made possible for us. There is greatness in patient endurance; in unyielding loyalty to a goal; in resistance to the temptation to betray the best we know; in speaking up for the truth when it is assailed; in steadfast adherence to vows given and promises made. God does not ask us to do extraordinary things. He asks us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well." - Sidney Greenberg

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything. Life is made up of little things. True greatness consists in being great in little things." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"In the world as it is, the richness of the outer stirs us all to the wonder of the inner whose greatness is displayed in acts so splendid." -

"Greatness consists in doing great deeds with little means – in the accomplishment of vast purposes. It consists in the private ranks of life – in helping one’s fellows, benefiting one’s neighborhood, in blessing one’s own city and state." -

"It is man only who is able to face his death consciously; that belongs to his greatness and dignity... Man’s knowledge that he has to die is also man’s knowledge that he is above death." -

"There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"The Self, the immortal Spirit, resides in the heart of all beings, who makes himself free from selfish desires and the craving of the senses. He beholds the greatness of the Spirit through the tranquility of the mind." - Katha Upanishad

"Each of us will one day be judged by our standard of life, not by our standard of living; by our measure of giving, not by our measure of wealth; by our simple goodness, not by our seeming greatness." -

"As human beings, our greatness lay not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the Atomic Age - as in being able to remake ourselves." -

"I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent." - Paul Graham

"No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe." - Harry Jack Gray, born Harry Jack Grusin

"Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor." -