Quotes About Ambition

Thousands of ordinary people were part of this metropolis, but their homes would have been perishable wattle and thatch, stuccoed with lime and mud. Every trace of their living has returned to the earth now, except for the limestone temples of art and worship. The things made of ambition, which rise higher than daily bread.

She stuck with a different theory: I needed to be more pushy with them. Did she give up on her dreams? No, she worked hard for what she wanted. Did I expect anybody to look out for Damon if he wouldn't look out for himself? Life is what you make it! Here's where Miss Barks didn't grow up: foster care. She had no clue how people can be living right on the edge of what's doable. If you push too hard, you can barrel yourself over a damn cliff.

Enrique felt a successful man needed no imagination at all.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain. Almost no one gets a chance to alter the course of human events on purpose, in the exact same way they wish for it to be altered.

Biding my time till I turned sixteen and could drop out of school, with a whole life ahead for applying myself to full-time shit work.

Elizabeth was counting on Marco to keep cousin Mary occupied until after the board meeting was over. A piece of cheese might catch a mouse, but an afternoon alone with a muscular masseur would ensnare her cousin far more effectively. And afterwards, while Mary lay sated and sleeping upon a massage table, wiser heads could determine the company's future. There were times, Elizabeth thought, when success in business demanded utter ruthlessness.

As the long limousine purred to life Edwina felt as if she were Elizabeth, setting sail to battle the Spanish Armada. She was Elizabeth, damn it! What she had built no one was going to take away from her. Not her house, not her hotels, not her fine stable of horses -- and most especially not the young thoroughbred she had left sleeping by the side of her Olympic-size outdoor pool. Some pleasures, she decided, were simply too enticing to give up.

make money. To keep myself

Barbara Taylor Bradford

He who ascends to mountaintops, shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind

John O'Hara's novel.

Barry Eisler

It came to him, the very picture: he was unshucked oyster, hurtling on the winds, all air, gonad and gut. Chances seemed in a loud hurry around him, but he could do nothing--nothing-- about them. Mestre yearned to be driven by some grand circumstance. Everything in his existence was too slack.

It came to him, the very picture: he was an unshucked oyster, hurtling on the winds, all air, gonad and gut. Chances seemed in a loud hurry around him, but he could do nothing--nothing-- about them. Mestre yearned to be driven by some grand circumstance. Everything in his existence was too slack

Men of character continued to sail to their death for men of greed.

the primary organizing principle for human achievement is stability, not progress, meaning that balance, symmetry, and regularity are more to be valued than change, growth, deviation, and ambition.

I believe that we are who we choose to be. Nobody is going to come and save you. You've got to save yourself. Nobody is going to give you anything. You've got to go out and fight for it. Nobody knows what you want except you, and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. So don't give up your dreams.

For how can this be? How can it be? That from all the Ridgefield Parks of our time we will assemble to build the great engines which will take us to the stars... and some of the stars will bring death and others will bring life and then there are those which will bring us nothing at all, but the engines will continue, they will go on forever. And so, in a fashion, after our fashion, will we.

All dreams appear impossible until somebody makes them happen.

the art of the possible.

I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin with literary aspirations.

Business is like football, Craig. If you have to knock someone down to reach the goal line, you better damn well do it, or you shouldn't put on a uniform and go out on the field in the first place.

Sons figured out they were bigger and never forgot it. Sons didn't care about the world they left for their sons or for their daughters, although they said they did when the time came to run for office.