Great men are meteors, consuming themselves to light the world
How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!
Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.
Larger-than-life characters make up about .01 percent of the world's population.
None but great men are capable of having great flaws.
The most memorable interviews for me are folks whose names I don't know: young civil rights leaders in the South, showing great courage as they walked into a town in the dark of night. A doctor working for 'Doctors Without Borders' in Somalia, operating by kerosene light in a tent. Those are the kinds of people that linger in your memory.
Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work, and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations, or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God.
History - a biography of a few stout and earnest persons
The good news - and it is largely good news - is that everyone has a chance to stand out. Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills. Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark
One of the interesting things is, the most gifted people, the biggest people, have no problem taking small roles.
Pay any price to stay in the presence of extraordinary people.
I think continually of those who were truly great...Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.
Success is uncommon and not to be enjoyed by the common man. I'm looking for uncommon people because we want to be successful, not average.
It is unfortunate that superior talent and superior men are so seldom united.
Only great men have great faults.
I read more and more and I came across this character, Caroline Weldon. Sometimes in history, you find these people that no one would dare create. They're too mad.
It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple.
These stories of people with unusual powers and unusual appearances, who do unusual things, people are always fascinated by them.
Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.
Great men are sometimes so even in small things.
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.
Great crises produce great men, and great deeds of courage.
There's ordinary people out there doing extraordinary things.
Great things happen in small places. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Jesse Jackson was born in Greenville.
In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man.
