Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains.

No man is a great man if he used violence to achieve his goals!

The great man is not convulsible or tormentable, events pass over him without much impression

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.