A Quote by Thomas Merton

We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

Thomas Merton

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Achieve Achieve Greatness Being Cannot Great Greatness Interest Lose Unless We Cannot

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Thomas Merton
American - Author
January 31, 1915 - December 10, 1968

Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

Thomas Merton

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.

Fred Hoyle

We cannot do great deeds unless we're willing to do the small things that make up the sum of greatness.

Theodore Roosevelt

Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Greatness of Soul seems therefore to be as it were a crowning ornament of the virtues; it enhances their greatness, and it cannot exist without them. Hence it is hard to be truly great-souled, for greatness of soul is impossible without moral nobility.

Aristotle

You cannot preach conviction of sin unless you have suffered it. You cannot preach repentance unless you have practiced it. You cannot preach faith unless you have exercised it. True preaching is artesian; it wells up from the great depths of the soul. If Christ has not made a well within us, there will be no outflow from us.

Charles Spurgeon

Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much.

Walter Savage Landor

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

William Shakespeare

Every great business leader I've ever met, in addition to being very smart, very driven, they have this, 'Why not me? Screw it, I deserve it, let's go.' And if you don't have that, you can't achieve greatness.

Donny Deutsch

I want to be known as 'The Big Shakespeare.' It was Shakespeare that said, 'Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.'

Shaquille O'Neal

God is to us like the sky to a small bird, which cannot see its outer limits and cannot reach its distant horizons, but can only lose itself in the greatness and immensity of the blueness.

John Powell

There cannot be a sense of abundance or the experience of prosperity without appreciation. You cannot find beauty unless you appreciate beauty. You cannot find friendship unless you appreciate others. You cannot find love unless you appreciate loving and being loved. If you wish abundance, appreciate life.

William R. Miller

Some are born great, others achieve greatness.

William Shakespeare

There can be no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love.

William Henry Drummond

As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.

Scott McClellan

I'm convinced that the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping each other, through collaborating, more than the greatness that's achieved by grabbing all you can or getting all you can or building all you can.

Alex Bogusky

A Quote by Thomas Merton

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