No man is great if he thinks he is.

Good and great are seldom in the same man.

Great men may make great mistakes;

...a great man. But...not quite great enough.

Great men are almost always bad men.

Only when there are things a man will not do is he capable of doing great things.

Thus, I blush to add, you can not be a philosopher and a good man, though you may be a philosopher and a great one.

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.

A great man who is vicious will be a great example of vice and a rich man who is not generous will be merely a miserly beggar, for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it but by spending it, and not by spending it as he pleases but by knowing how to spend it well.

The great man is not so great as folks think, and the dull man is not quite so stupid as he seems. The difference in our estimates of men lies in the fact that one individual is able to get his goods into the show-window, and the other is not aware that he has any show-window or any goods.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuous in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.