great quotes

  • There is sometimes a greater judgement shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them; and†there ismore beauty inthe works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.592,10 Sep.

  • Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Job 32:9.

  • It is of the L mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. Theyare new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORD'SLamentations 3:22^3.

  • Even so thetongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    James 3:5.

  • What millions diedthat Caesar might be great!

    -Thomas Campbell
      The Pleasures of Hope, pt.2, l.174.

  • There isa great manwhomakes every manfeelsmall.But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

    - G(ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton
      Charles Dickens, ch.1.

  • He prayeth well, who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.7.

  • Nothing great will ever be achieved without great menand men only become great if they are determined to be so.

    - Charles de Gaulle
      Le Fil de l'e p e  e.

  • It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

    - CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
    ^3  Bleak House, ch.28.

  • Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.

    - Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
      Coningsby, bk.4, ch.13.

  • Shakespeare†was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there† He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

    -John Dryden
      An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

  • Here lies, bowl'd out by Death's unerring ball, A cricketer renowned, by name John Small; But though his name was small, yet great was his fame, For nobly did he play the'noble game'. His life was like his inningslong and good; Full ninety summers had Death withstood, At length the ninetieth winter camewhen (Fate Not leaving him one solitary mate) This last of Hambledonians, old John Small, Gave up his bat and ballhis leather, wax and all.

    - Pierce Egan
      Epitaph on cricketer  John Small. Pierce Egan's Book of Sports.

  • When I meet a historian who cannot think that there have been great men, great men moreover in politics, I feel myself in the presence of a bad historian; and there are times when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchillwhether they can see that, no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains, quite simply, a great man.

    - Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton
      Political History, ch.2.

  •    To be great is to be misunderstood.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
    Essays: First Series,'Self-Reliance'.

  • Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
    Essays: First Series,'Circles'.

  • It was not the matter of the work, but the mind that went into, that countedand the manwho was not content to do small things well would leave great things undone.

    - Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
      The Voice of the People, bk.2, ch.4.

  •    How low, how little are the proud, How indigent the great!

    -Thomas Gray
      Ode on the Spring, l.19^20.

  • Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how farbut far above the great.

    -Thomas Gray
      The Progress of Poesy, l.122^3.

  • For every good art critic there may be ten great artists.

    - Clement Greenberg
      In the NewYork Times, 3 Oct.

  • The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholarsgreat men.

    - Oliver Wendell Holmes
    ^8  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch.6.

  • People moved in hushed and anxious hours while his life lingered on. It was thus I learned that some great man was at the helm of our country.

    - Herbert Clark Hoover
      On President Garfield's assassination, 2  Jul1881. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol1.

  • Canada only needs to be known in order to be great.

    -J Castell Hopkins
    The Story of the Dominion, preface.

  •    Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

    - Elbert Green Hubbard
    Thousand and One Epigrams.

  • Is there anyone among the great men who has not imitated? Nothing is made with nothing.

    -Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
      Quoted in Henri Delaborde Ingres, sa vie, ses travaux, sa doctrine (1870).

  • I have become increasingly convinced that great men have strong elements of comicality in them.

    - Roy HarrisJenkins, Baron Jenkins (of Hillhead)
    Churchill.

  • Minds that are great and free, Should not on fortune pause, 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause.

    - Ben Jonson
    The Underwood,'An Ode to Himself' (published1640).

  • Vere magnus est, qui magnam habet caritatem. He is truly great who has great charity.

    - StThomas a' Kempis
    c.1413  De Imitatione Christi, bk.1, ch.4, section 6.

  • Porque todo es irreal en este cuento. Nada sucedio   como se indica. Hechos y sitios se deformaron por el empen‹  o de tocar la verdad mediante una ficcio  n, una mentira. Todo irreal, nada sucedio   como aqu | se refiere. Pero fue un pobre intento de contribuir a que el gran crimen nunca se repita. For everything in this story is unreal. Nothing happened the way it was suggested. Facts and places were distorted by that persistent desire to touch the truth by means of fiction, a lie. All of it is unreal; nothing happened the way it istold here.It was a poorattempt to help ensure that the great crime is never repeated.

    -Jose   Emilio Pacheco
      Morira  s lejos (translated asYouWill Die in a Distant Land, 1991).

  • It is now apparent that this great, this powerful, this formidablekingdomisconsidered onlyas a province of a despicable electorate.

    -William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
      Speech to the House of Commons,10 Dec.

  • Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle 2, l.1^12.

  • But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.

    - Alexander Pope
      Of a patron.'An Epistle to DrArbuthnot', l.247^8.

  • We live in the great indoors: the vacuum cleaner grazes over the carpet, lowing, its udder a swollen wobble. SeeAusten 43:88.

    - Craig Anthony Raine
      'An Inquiry intoTwo Inches of Ivory'.

  • A mere copier of nature never produces anything great.

    - SirJoshua Reynolds
      Discourses on Art, no.3,14 Dec.

  • For when the One Great Scorer comes To write against your name, He marksnot that you won or lost But how you played the game.

    - Grantland Rice
    Only the Brave,'Alumnus Football'.

  • Not least among the qualities ina great King is a capacity to permit his Ministers to serve him.

    -Cardinal Richelieu
      Testament Politique.

  • They who would be great in our little government seem as ridiculous to me as schoolboys who†climb a crab- tree, venturing their necks for fruit which solid pigs would disdain if they were not starving.

    -JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
    c.1676  Letter to Henry Savile. InTheLetters ofJohnWilmot, Earl of Rochester, edited byJeremyTreglown (1980).

  • Idiots are always in favour of inequality of income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favour of equality.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      The IntelligentWoman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.

  • I think continually of those who were truly great.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'I Think Continually ofThose'.

  • The great and almost onlycomfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.

    - Dame Freya Madeleine Stark
      TheValley of theAssassins.

  • Pray God our greatness may not fail Through craven fears of being great.

    -Tennyson
      'Hands All Round',1.31^2.

  • Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair, And dream about the great and their pride; They have spoken against you everywhere, But weigh this song with the great and their pride; I made it out of a mouthful of air, Their children's children shall say they have lied.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'HeThinks ofThose who have Spoken Evil of His Beloved', complete poem. Collected in TheWind Among the Reeds (1899).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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