Greatness
Overview
 
Since the publication of Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...

’s Hereditary Genius in 1869, and especially with the accelerated development of intelligence tests in the early 1900s, there has been a vast amount of social scientific research published relative to the question of ‘greatness’. Much of this research doesn’t actually use the term ‘great’ in describing itself, preferring terms such as ‘eminence’, ‘genius
Genius
Genius is something or someone embodying exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight....

’, ‘exceptional achievement’, etc.
Quotations

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heavest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.

Seneca the Younger, p. 292.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the using of strength.

Henry Ward Beecher, p. 292.

True greatness does not consist so much in doing extraordinary things, as in conducting ordinary affairs with a noble demeanor and from a right motive. It is necessary and most profitable to remember the advice to Titus, " Showing all good fidelity in all things."

Elias Lyman Magoon, p. 292.

A solemn and religious regard to spiritual and eternal things is an indispensable element of all true greatness.

Daniel Webster, p. 292.

He who does the most good is the greatest man. Power, authority, dignity; honors, wealth, and station,— these are so far valuable as they put it into the hands of men to be more exemplary and more useful than they could be in an obscure and private life. But then these are means conducting to an end, and that end is goodness.

Bishop Jortin, p. 293.

A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends.

David Thomas (born 1813)|David Thomas, p. 293.

He is truly great that is great in charity. He is truly great that is little in himself, and maketh no account of any height of honor. And he is truly learned that doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.

Thomas à Kempis, p. 293.

It is, in a great measure, by raising up and endowing great minds that God secures the advance of human affairs, and the accomplishment of His own plans on earth.

Albert Barnes, p. 293.

There is but one method, and that is hard labor.

Sydney Smith, p. 293.

 
x
OK