Quotes About Ambition

A boy's will is the wind's will,And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.

A banner with the strange device,Excelsior!

We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.

Perserverence is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Repentance is another name for aspiration.

Qué sociedad! -A tal sociedad, tal César.[...]

either you are so underdeveloped that you can't see all that you can do, or you won't sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it...

He was always in a hurry to get where he was not.

To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

Society in itself is no great harm, but unsatisfied social aspirations are a bad and ugly business. We must certainly accept, and we will.

He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before.

Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.

he was one of those diplomats who like and know how to work, and, despite his laziness, he occasionally spent nights at his desk.

No man is satisfied with his fortune, but every man is satisfied with his wit.

Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now his passion was even doing battle with his love

He felt he was himself and did not want to be otherwise. He only wanted to be better than he had been before.

Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person.

Blizzard or no blizzard I start out. So business gets done. They think money making is a joke. No, take pains and rack your brains.

I'm never going to get married. I'm going to be a ballet-dancer. But don't tell anybody.

He meditated on the the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives man a power of making himself, or even as it seemed to him - of making the universe into anything he wishes.