To be great is to be misunderstood. Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.

To see the greatness of a mountain, one must keep one's distance.

If a man is called to be street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends.

You achieve stature only by being good enough to deserve it, by forcing even the contemptuous and indifferent to pay attention, and to acknowledge that human relations and human emotions are of inexhaustible interest wherever they occur.

I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every man.

That man is great, and he alone, Who serves a greatness not his own, For neither praise nor self: Content to know and be unknown: Whole in himself.

It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.

We can do no great things-only small things with great love.

Men in great places are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business.