Top 120 Illustrious Quotes & Sayings

Illustrious man! deriving honor less from the splendor of his situation than from the dignity of his mind.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path ... It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts for distinction.

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

That short, potential stir That each can make but once, That bustle so illustrious Tis almost consequence, Is the eclat of death.

Bright and illustrious illusions!

You, our youth of today, are among the most illustrious spirits to be born into mortality in any age of the world. Yours is a noble heritage and a wonderful opportunity.

It was my care to make my life illustrious not by words more than by deeds.

Whatever part I'm playing, I always carry with me something that's been used by an illustrious predecessor. I'm a great believer in a touching of hands. I have daggers belonging to Henry Irving and Sarah Siddons.

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels.

I think [Karl] Marx, Pope John XXIII or Rosa Luxemburg [had achieved the mode of existence].But it would be useless to look at a list of illustrious names.

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.

My husband John Thaw worked with many directors, some of whom cut their teeth working on the 'Sweeney,' 'Kavanagh QC' and 'Morse' before going on to illustrious careers.

After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

To go to L.A. and be on the Addams Family set? It was beautiful production design and an illustrious set. I'm focused on never losing that sense of privilege. I'm still like, "I'm super lucky."

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato. The best part is underground.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

In receiving from the people the sacred trust twice confided to my illustrious predecessor, and which he has discharged so faithfully and so well, I know that I can not expect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and success.

A wise nation preserves its records, gathers up its muniments, decorates the tombes of its illustrious dead, repairs its greatest structures and fosters national pride and love of country, by perpetual references to the sacrifices and glories of the past.

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a muse.

As a theoretical physicist, I feel at once proud and humble at the thought of the illustrious figures that have preceded me here to receive the greatest of all honors in science, the Nobel prize.

Bright and illustrious illusions! Who can blame, who laugh at the boy, who not admire and commend him, for that desire of a fame outlasting the Pyramids by which he insensibly learns to live in a life beyond the present, and nourish dreams of a good unattainable by the senses?

I shall tread in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor.

My illustrious lordship, I'll show you what a woman can do.

What is there that is illustrious that is not also attended by labor?

There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.

I have been further enlightened by the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.

What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive.

I'm lucky to have such an illustrious family. We love each other and have immense respect for each other.

The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.

I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country.

On receiving from the people the sacred trust twice confided on my illustrious predecessor, and which he has discharged so faithfully and so well, I know that I can not expect to perform the arduous task with equal ability and success.

The illustrious and noble ought to place before them certain rules and regulations, not less for their hours of leisure and relaxation than for those of business.

The greatest ornament of an illustrious life is modesty and humility, which go a great way in the character even of the most exalted princes.

From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in Rome... He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.

God often lays the sum of His amazing providences in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors, on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity. This illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages, of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered.

Illustrious confessors of Jesus Christ, a Christian finds in prison the same joys as the prophets tasted in the desert. Call it not a dungeon, but a solitude. When the soul is in heaven, the body feels not the weight of fetters; it carries the whole man along with it.

Nothing is more praiseworthy, nothing more suited to a great and illustrious man than placability and a merciful disposition.

Children, to be illustrious is sad.

I was born to an illustrious family in Hyderabad.

I think I've had an illustrious career.

Fame legitimizes. Being conspicuous gets confused with being illustrious.

I come from a very illustrious line of divorces. We love to get divorced in my family. My mother and father have been married four times each - eight ceremonies with the best of intentions.

Time has a doomsday book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.

It is noble to be shy, illustrious not to know how to act, great not to have a gift for living.

In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.

The two Great Unknowns, the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best known unknown persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.

As an overruling providence may succeed our wishes, let us rear an offspring in every respect worthy to fill the most illustrious stations of their predecessors.

A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the happiest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men.

No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave.

I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men... in receiving from the people the sacred trust confided to my illustrious predecessor.

The glory of wealth and of beauty is fleeting and frail; virtue is illustrious and everlasting.

Pakistan is heir to an intellectual tradition of which the illustrious exponent was the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. He saw the future course for Islamic societies in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.

I've fallen in love with my horse. It's a safer bet. We all know from my illustrious past that I should be sticking to men with four legs.

Can we wonder that men perish and are forgotten, when their noblest and most enduring works decay? Death comes even to monumental structures, and oblivion rests on the most illustrious names.