GREATNESS.
That man is great, and he alone,
Who serves a greatness not his own,
For neither praise nor pelf:
Content to know and be unknown:
Whole in himself.
A Great Man. LORD LYTTON (Owen Meredith).
He fought a thousand glorious wars,
And more than half the world was his,
And somewhere, now, in yonder stars,
Can tell, mayhap, what greatness is.
The Chronicle of the Drum. W.M. THACKERAY.
Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But the eternal substance of his greatness,—
To which I leave him.
The False One, Act ii. Sc. 1. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Greatness on goodness loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves, for fortune's ice, vertue's firm land.
Turkish History. Under a portrait of Mustapha I. R. KNOLLES.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Philip Van Artevelde, Pt. I. Act i. Sc. 7. SIR H. TAYLOR.