Greatness

"Les grands ne sont grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: Levons-nous. Ní uasal aon uasal ach sinne bheith íseal: Éirímis. The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise."

"I am destined to pass through this world, wandering like an invisible meteor. Precisely because I am superior, I will have to empty the entire cup of sorrow and distress with no joy to cheer me. But the harsh intoxication of drinking from the chalice of sorrow is a superb pleasure that only one who tears his soul to shreds by himself, with his own hands, is given to taste."

"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 are two alternatives, and only two, before us. First, which is unlikely, is that we unscramble our modern interdependent culture, returning to separate and isolationist lives … Such a world would not demand greatness. The other alternative is to so expand our spiritual powers that we vastly increase the range of our understanding and sympathy. There is no middle way. It is greatness — universalism — or perish."

"Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus, and although there are essential differences, we are not made to feel them essential. His very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world."

"I have touched the highest point of all my greatness: And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting."

"There arent any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power. … The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit."