greatness quotes

The Knight in the triumph of his heart made several 6 reflections on thegreatness of the British Nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that theThames was thenoblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the Seven Wonders of the World; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

-Joseph Addison
  In The Spectator, no.383, 20 May.

†the Metropolis of Great-Britain, founded before the City of Rome, walled by Constantine the Great, no ways inferior to the greatest in Europe for Riches and Greatness.

- Nathan   d.1742 Bailey
     LONDON1721 An Universal Etymological English Dictionary.

La politique et le sort des hommes sont forme  s par des hommes sans ide  al et sans grandeur. Ceux qui ont une grandeur en eux ne font pas de politique. Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.

- Albert Camus
Carnets,1935^42 (published1962).

   Neville Chamberlain had greatness thrust upon himand in trying to prove he could bear it, collapsed under the weight.

- David Cannadine
The Pleasure of the Past.

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.

-Thomas Carlyle
^4  Sartor Resartus, bk.2, ch.9.

It is only when you get to see and realize what India isthat she is the strength and the greatness of Englandthat you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.

- Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (of Kedleston)
  Speech at Southport,15 May.

Amanisseldomashamedoffeeling that hecannot lovea woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men.

- George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
^2  Middlemarch, bk.4, ch.39.

I am no prophetand here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

Some of us will fight and fight again to save the party we love.We will fight and fight againtobring back sanityand honestyand dignity, so that our party, with its great past, may retain its glory and its greatness.

- Hugh Gaitskell
  Denouncing unilateralists trying to gain control of the party. Labour Party conference speech, Oct.

To vilifya great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

- EdgarAllan Poe
  Marginalia1844^49.

In me there dwells No greatness, save it be some far-off touch Of greatness to know well I am not great. 846

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'Lancelot and Elaine', l.447^9.

Unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as a nation will soon be a footnote in the history books, a distant memory of an offshore island, lost in the mist of time like Camelot, remembered kindly for its noble past.

- Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
  General election campaign speech, Bolton, 2 May.