Great Things Quotes

Mother Angelica is proof that we are not limited by other's perceptions, and that God sometimes calls the most unlikely people to great things. ~ Raymond Arroyo

That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself. ~ Michael Shannon

The care of God for us is a great thing, if a man believe it at heart: it plucks the burden of sorrow from him. ~ Euripides

Real Christians revel in desperate ventures for Christ, expecting from God great things and attempting the same with exhilaration. ~ Charles Studd

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced. ~ Robin McKinley

And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. ~ James Baldwin

Brad got me this great thing for Christmas. It's a bookshelf that has a book on every religion. That's how we plan to raise our kids. Teach them about all religions. They can pick one or be a student of all of them. We'll celebrate Kwanzaa for our girl. We'll celebrate moon and water festivals for our boys. We'll take them to temples in certain countries. Also to church. ~ Angelina Jolie

It is a very positive event, being nervous. It allows you to do great things. ~ Tom Kite

We can't spend all day trying to get the performance exactly right and you just have to accept that and move on and accept the medium that you're working in and you know, there's a beauty in working under constraints and limitations. I think a lot of great things can come out of that. ~ Emily Deschanel

There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I love collaboration. I love working with people to come up with something better than what I initially thought. With directing, you have to be controlling in a lot of ways, but I find myself trying to battle against that, to not be controlling, because that's when great things can come about, beyond how great you think you can be. ~ Joe Hahn

I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity. ~ Randy Schekman

Love and honor. They are the two great things, and now they're dimmed and blighted. Today, love is just sex and sentimentality. Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person's integrity and truth in a way that is compatible with - that makes both of you light up when you recognize the quality in the other. That's what love is. It's a recognition of singularity… And love is giving and giving and giving … not looking for any return. Until you do that, you can't love. ~ Robert Graves

There have been in this century only one great man and one great thing: Napoleon and liberty. For want of the great man, let us have the great thing. ~ Victor Hugo

All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas. ~ Nick Cave

This Church is true. It will weather every storm that beats against it. It will outlast every critic who rises to mock it. It was established by God our Eternal Father for the blessing of His sons and daughters of all generations. It carries the name of Him who stands as its head, even the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. It is governed and moves by the power of the priesthood. It sends forth to the world another witness of the divinity of the Lord. Be faithful, my friends. Be true. Be loyal to the great things of God which have been revealed in this dispensation. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Great things are wrought through simple and small things. Like the small flecks of gold that accumulate over time into a large treasure, our small and simple acts of kindness and service will accumulate into a life filled with love for Heavenly Father, devotion to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and a sense of peace and joy each time we reach out to one another. ~ M. Russell Ballard

A great thing is a great book; but a greater thing than all is the talk of a great man. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

You are capable of great things, he said with conviction. If by great things, he meant complete destruction, then yes, it would seem so. ~ Pippa DaCosta

Gisele Bundchen I always admired. I think she is an example for all models. If I could have just a little bit of her career would already be a happy girl. She seems to be a determined woman, a fighter, very strong. I think she is an icon of Brazilian people. Gisele is a woman who is extremely inspiring, not only in the fashion world, she also does great things for the world. ~ Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Paul Theroux on Blogging, Travel Writing, and Three Cups of Tea

Speaking of books that contain an element of travel, Greg Mortenson's bestseller about Central Asia was in the news recently. Were you surprised by the allegations that Three Cups of Tea contained fabrications?

No, I wasn't. One of the things The Tao of Travel shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them. For example, everyone loved John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley. Turns out he didn't travel alone, his wife kept meeting him, yet she was never mentioned in the book. Steinbeck didn't go to all the places he mentioned, nor did he meet all the people he said he met. In other words, Travels With Charley is fiction, or at least half-fiction. As for Three Cups of Tea, I think that philanthropists and humanitarians are even less forthcoming about what they do. I guess this guy did build a couple of schools in Afghanistan, but a self-promoting humanitarian is not someone I have a great deal of trust or belief in. I lived for six years in Africa and I've been to Africa numerous times since then. People build schools for their own reasons - not to improve a country.

The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project. Mi ~ Paul Theroux

Even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

That's one of the great things about the feed - that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit. It's more now, it's not so much about the educational stuff but more regarding the fact that everything that goes on, goes on on the feed. ~ M T Anderson

When the Lord instills hope and faith and peace and assurance in people, they can bring great things to pass. This, then, is often what we should look for when we ask for help-not a miracle to solve our problem for us, but a miracle inside, to help us come to the solution ourselves, with the Lord's help and the Lord's power. ~ Gene R. Cook

Great things happen through great commitments. Our commitment to the next generation is a pollution-free, toxic chemical-free, nuclear weapons-free, clean world. ~ Amit Ray

Do great things and challenge the world. ~ Marie Lu

Be a giver. Share whatsoever you can. And remember, I am not making any distinction between. small things and great things. If you can smile whole-heartedly, hold somebody's hand and smile, then it is a creative act, a great creative act. Just embrace somebody to your heart and you are creative. Just look with loving eyes at somebody; just a loving look can change the whole world of a person. ~ Rajneesh

GREAT THINGS sometimes come from rewriting under pressure. ~ Lynn Hunt

You don't have to have all the right things in life, all the doors already open for you, in order to do great things. ~ Sara McMann

People do not become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great. ~ George Bernard Shaw

People who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want. ~ Stephen Chbosky

We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet. ~ Shane Claiborne

If you avoid difficult things, great things will avoid you. ~ George H. Brimhall

In order to do great things, you have to take on challenges in your life. Im doing nothing but taking on different challenges. ~ Tracy McGrady

Discouragement is the cancer of great things. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I think the great thing about grandparents is seeing another home, realising that people you love can have different priorities, different diversions, different opinions and lead quite different lives from the ones you see every day, and that is immensely valuable. ~ Simon Hoggart

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do? ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The research they do is incredible. I was overwhelmed. They have a great thing going on out there. In reality, this came from one brother's love for another brother. Seeing the center up in his brother's behalf, it's an unbelievable thought. ~ Craig Biggio

Water really does great things for my skin. ~ Jackee Harry

The great thing about doing physical comedy for film is that if it doesn't work you're not exposed. It ends up on the editing room floor, so it gives you a lot more room to experiment I guess. But I really enjoy doing it. I'm very comfortable tapping into my inner idiot. ~ Isla Fisher

Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record - not in these tough times for America. In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party. ~ Joe Lieberman

The great thing about fashion is that it always looks forward. ~ Oscar De La Renta

God came into the world to reawaken the thirst for great things in us. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Being a 'hunk' is going to do great things for my love life, and I'll get a lot more offers. But I'll certainly never see myself as one. ~ Robert Kazinsky

She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that's one of the reasons why they did. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

You can accomplish great things by attempting great things. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The American dream means that you have the chance to work hard, get an education and do great things for yourself, for your kids. The great thing in American is it doesn't matter what your last name is, doesn't matter if you're wealthy. ~ Bobby Jindal

An executive cannot gradually dismiss details. Business is made up of details and I notice that the chief executive who dismisses them is quite likely to dismiss his business. Success is the sum of detail. It might perhaps be pleasing to imagine oneself beyond detail and engaged only in great things, but as I have often observed, if one attends only to great things and lets the little things pass the great things become little; that is, the business shrinks. ~ Harvey S. Firestone

The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor's job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror. ~ Randy Pausch

Destiny was a hope found in the hearts of desperate men. But sometimes, if they believed strongly enough, desperate men could do great things. ~ A. Lee Martinez

I love everybody. One of the great things about me is that I have a very positive attitude. ~ Imelda Marcos

The great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don't want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do. ~ Margaret Caroline Anderson

To achieve great things, we must first dream. ~ Coco Chanel

We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love. -Mother Teresa ~ Louisa Thomsen Brits

( ... ) nearly all the great things that exist owe their existence to a defiant despite: it is despite grief and anguish, despite poverty, loneliness, bodily weakness, vice and passion and a thousand inhibitions, that they have come into being at all. ~ Thomas Mann

The great thing about it is, in Hollywood, certain people are very good at keeping their lives and who they are very private. I've never met anybody as down to earth and cool in Hollywood than Matt Damon. ~ Anthony Mackie

You should make great things, not promising great things. ~ Pythagoras

Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my efforts to create an equivalent with paint color for the world, life as I see it. ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

In the aftermath of loss, we do what we've always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can. My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, "What on earth are you doing?" The sparrow replies, "I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help." The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, "Do you really think you're going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?" And the sparrow says, "One does what one can." So what can I do? Not much. Mother Teresa said that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. This reminder has saved me many times. ~ Anne Lamott

It is a great thing to be a child of God, and joint-heir with Jesus Christ. If this is your privilege, you will know the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. ~ Ellen G. White

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art. ~ Marcel Proust

No one is any longer carried away by the desire for the good to perform great things, no one is precipitated by evil into atrocious sins, and so there is nothing for either the good or the bad to talk about, and yet for that very reason people gossip all the more, since ambiguity is tremendously stimulating and much more verbose than rejoicing over goodness or repentance over evil. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

To anyone out there especially young people feeling like they don't fit in and will never be accepted, please know this, great things can happen when you have the courage to be yourself. ~ Michael Sam

The great thing about the dilemma we're in is that we get to re-imagine every single thing we do ... There isn't a single thing that doesn't require a complete remake. There are two ways of looking at that. One is: Oh my gosh, what a big burden. The other way, which I prefer, is: What a great time to be born! What a great time to be alive! Because this generation gets to essentially completely change the world. ~ Paul Hawken

The more lines I have, in general, the worse a movie is. It's very rare that I get say great things in fantastic movies. So if you see me as like, number one on a call sheet? In general, that movie is pretty bad. ~ Matthew Lillard

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Snoopy. I love the way he sits and lies on his kennel and contemplates the great things of life. ~ Jackie Tabick

So I hope to stretch my acting skills. I got to a point in my dancing where I felt like I did so much hard work and I achieved a lot of great things, and I wanted to try something else and put that same kind of commitment that I did into my dancing into something that I was also passionate about. I had so many opportunities with my dance and now I'm just excited to get better as an actress. ~ Julianne Hough

Of course I love when people are quiet, but I also love when people are comfortable. I love when people emote. The flip side of having a totally silent audience is that they're less likely to react to you in the space, and I think that's one of the great things about performing live: you get energy from the audience, and you give energy back to them. There's interaction. ~ Missy Mazzoli

By working together, pooling our resources and building on our strengths, we can accomplish great things. ~ Ronald Reagan

Never get a reputation for a small perfection if you are trying for fame in a loftier area. The world can only judge by generals, and it sees that those who pay considerable attention to minutiae seldom have their minds occupied with great things. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

The only reason you do not do great things is because you timidly cling to small things. Will you let loose of small things and bear the uncertainty of having nothing for a while? Do this and eventually you will do great things. ~ Vernon Howard

If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing - not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied. ~ Michael Faraday

If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you. ~ Alan Armstrong

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few priveledged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The great thing is, Internet allows you to create your own job, not just look for jobs other people are going to give you. And that, combined with the American spirit, I think, is going to help us come out of the recession faster than other countries. And I think it's going to help Africa come out of, you know, a century of slump. ~ Esther Dyson

To execute great things, one should live as though one would never die. ~ Luc De Clapiers

Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter. ~ Homer

Always give chance for the things you don't want. Cause sometimes they turn out to be the great things you'll ever have. ~ Elyn Balongcas

My wife is a terrific Southern cook. My favorite of all the great things she cooks is 'trash potatoes.' That's mashed potatoes with sour cream, bacon, cheddar cheese, and horseradish. It's a total gut bomb. ~ Mike Vogel

May you find new strength to accomplish your daily work. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The idea that relationships are not a strategy is potent; and the sad commentary proceeds to say that often relationships are seen as a strategy, a means to accomplish great things - except love and relationship are not what is really wanted. We want to appear relational so people will like what we have to offer. It's the difference between wanting a good marriage and loving the person you married. ~ Scot McKnight

The only cure to all this madness; is too dream, far and wide, if possibility doesn't knock, create a damn door. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't make it. If the journey your travelling seems to far fetched and wild beyond your imagination; continue on it, great things come to the risk takers. And last but not least, live today; here, right now, you'll thank your future self for it later. ~ Nikki Rowe

You have to be honest, have integrity, be able to cooperate and get along with other people. Sigma Chi is a great place to learn that and that's why it's a great thing to join this fraternity. ~ Jim Palmer

I am proud of all my ancestresses. They showed us that it's possible to do great things and still live a happy, pleasure filled life. So can I; so can you. ~ Maria Rodale

The great thing about doing a show in New York is that you can work until the night before. ~ Robert Longo

In order to achieve great things, you have to do might ones ~ Rayfield

Imagination magnifies small objects with fantastic exaggeration until they fill our soul, and with bold insolence cuts down great things to its own size, as when speaking of God. ~ Blaise Pascal

People who believe in themselves and in a cause greater than themselves can achieve great things-as long as they have a well-intentioned leader to point them in the right direction. ~ John Baldoni

We are gripped by God's will of love, and must help carry out that will in this world, in small things as in great things, in saving as in pardoning. To be glad instruments of God's love in this imperfect world is the service to which we are called. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Second letter from Mom:
So! What if you colored the world? This still does not seem a great thing. In fact it seems very natural that you eventually got to paint the entire world. Those colors of yours were always strange; they didn't go away since you were born. ~ Elena D. Calin

Remember: Christ is calling you; the Church needs you; the Pope believes in you and he expects great things of you. ~ Pope John Paul I

Once you expect great things from yourself, anything is possible. ~ Mark W. Boyer

One of the great things about being commander in chief is getting to know our men and women in uniform in a very intimate way, whether it's visiting Walter Reed and seeing our wounded soldiers, or being on a base and talking to families, or interacting with them on missions. They're the best of the best: always thinking about the mission, not thinking about credit, not thinking about who's up front. ~ Barack Obama

The great thing about being rich is, you can embrace practices that kill the poor - that's what socialism does. ~ Greg Gutfeld

I am gratified on a regular basis by the people I meet all across the country who dedicate their efforts to protecting the environment and public health and are making a difference. The great thing about working on important issues is all of the other people you meet doing the same thing. ~ Laurie David

The great thing about the movies ... is-you're giving people little ... tiny pieces of time ... that they never forget. ~ James Stewart

I have never taken a job or done a job where I felt I needed to leave my conscience at the door. One of the great things about not being in politics as a career is that I can do this job without thinking about my career. I can think about what we're trying to do, what we're trying to accomplish and what we're trying to leave. ~ Deval Patrick

Every great thing that has been accomplished, and is yet to be accomplished, starts with a dream. ~ Bill Courtney

Don't ever deny yourself a chance at your dreams. We're all meant for great things, but not everyone believes that can happen. ~ Keiynan Lonsdale

Fantasy football is not only a good thing, but a great thing. ~ Jay Mohr