Reverence for greatness dies out, and is succeeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of many, either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a general feeling of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or a general, who has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is unfortunate and sinks from his high estate. It becomes a misfortune, if not a crime, to be above the popular level. We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take counsel with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great men seem never so scarce as when they are most needed, and small men never so bold to insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity and incapable pretence and sophomoric greenness, and showy and sprightly incompetency are most dangerous.

What then is to become of man? Will he be the equal of god or the beasts? What a terrifying distance! What then shall he be? Who cannot see from all this that man is lost, that he has fallen from his place, that he anxiously seeks it, and cannot find it again? And who then is to direct him there? The greatest men have failed.

We are then able to answer in some manner the question, "Why have we no great men?" We have no great men chiefly because we are always looking for them. We are connoisseurs of greatness, and connoisseurs can never be great; we are fastidious, that is, we are small. When Diogenes went about with a lantern looking for an honest man, I am afraid he had very little time to be honest himself. And when anybody goes about on his hands and knees looking for a great man to worship, he is making sure that one man at any rate shall not be great.

Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way.

The removal from among us of a public man of exceptional capacity and marked personality still in the prime of life, is at any time a tragedy. The sense of loss on personal and public grounds, and the inevitable diminution of the effective influence which at all times so essentially depends on the winning personality of the individual, are keen and real.

Great men whilst living must expect disgraces,
Dead they're ador'd—when none desire their places.

It is so depressing to watch, almost on a daily basis, the erasure of great men by know-nothing non-entities who can build nothing, create nothing, do nothing but destroy all that does not conform to the ever shifting pieties of present-tense virtue-signalling.

God has taken away the greatest man of his generation, for Dr. Livingstone stood alone.

Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.

When a great politician dies, or any man who has filled a large space in the public mind, and made a noise in the world, the newspapers long ring with the event. But it is otherwise with the great thinker, the mathematician or the philosopher, who has laboured silently and in comparative seclusion, to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. When such a man is removed by death there are public journals, even among those professedly devoted to literature and science, which can dismiss the event with a few faint and cold remarks.* But time rectifies all that. It is found sooner or later that no reputation, however brilliant, is permanent or durable which does not rest on useful discoveries and real contributions to our knowledge.

His absence will haunt their hallways, and he will be a space they can't fill. And then time will pass, and the hole will be gone, like when an organ is removed and the body's fluids flow into the space it leaves. Humans can't tolerate emptiness for long.

And this is our leaders, and I’m saying leaders at different levels, because the leaders that we point to and look to as inspirations and heroes, they’re all gone now. And I don’t know who we point to, to replace them. Because today, we’re so critical of the person, we’re so judgmental of the person, and we miss the message that that person carries.

Behind every great man is a pickpocket.

No man ever took better care of his life. He lived only to go on living.
I waited for more, but he said no more, so I asked, "What became of him, Master Cuachic?"
"He died."
"That is all?"
"What else ever becomes of any man? I no longer remember even his name. No one remembers anything at all about him, except that he lived and then he died."