Quotes About Ambition

beneath Lincoln's tenderness and kindness, he was without question the most complex, ambitious, willful, and implacable leader of them all.

A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be, he said, obstinately. But perhaps I don't feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity?

Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of mind described by "tolerantly amused eyes" was years away from me. I don't think I really saw people then, except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understand, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of

There was a certain struggling fury that went with being jobless, and persevering, and being turned down, that was different from simply being jobless.

The boys would quit school and sooner or later go to jail for something silly. I might not quit school, not while Mama had any say in the matter, but what difference would that make? What was I going to do in five years? Work in the textile mill? Join Mama at the diner? It all looked bleak to me. No wonder people got crazy as they grew up.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn't know it.

Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination.

I wish to make my fortune with you.' 'Well, you can forget about that, for a start,' said Francis Crawford. 'And if your place in Paradise has been written, then for God's sake hang on to it. Because we're going in the opposite direction.

Think for yourselves for a change. You've been pedlars: go and be merchants. You've been mercenaries: go and find something of your own to defend. You've finished teething and there's the world: crack it open if you can.

Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels -- the latter for preference; both if necessary.

He's asked Master Zitwitz to leave the duke and travel with him as household controller to the Ambassador's residence in Turkey.' Philippa Somerville blew her nose sharply. 'On the strength of his sweet cherry sauce?' 'On the strength, I think, of that handy right uppercut,' said Jerott.

It was of no importance. Birth did not matter; heredity was merely a hurdle; one was what one made of oneself; that and no other.

Then she said, Thorfinn! quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points. No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth! the name reached her like sling-shot. Groa said, They are the same man. I should know. I married both.

habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative, of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death." Katherine

You will not face Sybilla because alone of all of us, she does not know you are venal. She still thinks you care for Scotland and for us, and are prepared to think both more important than riches; for our sake to govern your ambition; for the boy's sake to master your emotions. And when she sees you——' 'She will know she was wrong,' Lymond said.

She ought to be at home in Flaw Valleys, doing her morning exercise on the lute, at which, said her teacher, she would have had a distinguished future, had she not been born English.

Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration.

Modern war is fought by a number of strong, sweaty horsemen with constipation, who have their eyes on power, on wealth and on glory, and who obey the rules just when it pleases them.

He isn't coming,' said Adam. 'Splendid,' said Piero Strozzi heartily. 'I love him, but I have brethren enough who are trying to climb with a foot on my neck.

What he wanted was very near. It was typical of the monstrous, egregious, laughable irony which dominated his life that with every dragging lift of his arms, he should be saying over and over, 'Not yet.'

I'm going back to Russia. That's where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies.

He couldn't succeed Richard now, certainly," said Janet. "But if the English took over? Criminals at the horn with the right kind of politics have died in silk sheets before now." "So they say. Perhaps it's lucky then," said Sybilla, "that this criminal has cheated his way out of favour with every party in Europe.

To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.

Oh, well, faint heart never won so much as a scrap of paper