A Quote by William Hazlitt

No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

William Hazlitt

Quote Topics

Act Greatness Itself

Quote Author

William Hazlitt
English - Critic
April 10, 1778 - September 18, 1830

A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves without them

William Hazlitt

I think the media in America have been absolutely fantastic about the rise of Trump, they've kept a firm eye on the ball: this constitutes democracy, this constitutes transparency, this constitutes fairness, this constitutes the way to behave in a civic society, this constitutes fascism, this constitutes authoritarianism. They're drawing that line, and they're calling him out every time. That's really what needs to happen, and you just have to do that.

Irvine Welsh

The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of societythe taking possession of the means of production in the name of societythis is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not abolished. It dies out.

Friedrich Engels

Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.

Blaise Pascal

A good character today is shaped by greatness, greatness in vision, greatness in courage, greatness in insight, greatness in purpose and devotion.

A. Powell Davies

Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.

Christian Nestell Bovee

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

Jean Baudrillard

...greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks into itself.

William Hazlitt

Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

Lewis H. Lapham

The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.

Alexis de Tocqueville

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

Jean de la Bruyere

The first step toward greatness is to be honest, says the proverb; but the proverb fails to state the case strong enough. Honesty is not only "the first step toward greatness," - it is greatness itself.

Christian Nestell Bovee

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For me, life is like an act within itself. Everything I do is an act. Where I'm going is an act.