Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Charles Caleb Colton

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.

Charles Caleb Colton

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

Charles Caleb Colton

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

Charles Simmons

True greatness consists in being great in little things.

Chris Colfer

You can't shy away from your greatness just because you're afraid you're not great enough

Chinua Achebe

You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree — the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Greatness depends on where you are coming from.

Dave Chappelle

The mark of greatness is when everything before you is obsolete, and everything after you bears your mark.

Charles Dickens

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

Charles Dickens

An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.

Charles Dickens

The more man knows of man, the better for the common brotherhood among men.

Charles Dickens

It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.

Charles Dickens

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Charles Dickens

Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.

Charles Caleb Colton

When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

Charles Caleb Colton

No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty-let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only-those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something maybe learned.

Charles Caleb Colton

That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.

Edward Gibbon

The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents . . .

Carlos Fuentes

I had the good fortune of having a happy, closely knit family.

Charles de Gaulle

It's better to have a bad plan then no plan at all.

Belle Boyd

Fortune has played me a sad trick by letting me live on and on.

Robert W. Welch, Jr.

The responsibilities which are imposed by rank and privilege and good fortune can... become very onerous indeed.

Jamal Lewis

Luckily, I have the good fortune of being on the same team as Ray Lewis. I don't have to face him on Sunday.

Thomas Middleditch

I've had the fortune of meeting most of the 'Kids in the Hall.' One meeting was special in particular because this was before I had gotten anything, before anything was clicking, and I just found myself hanging out with Scott Thompson.

Arthur Helps

Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.