Quotes About Ambition

It you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

Oh, Christ, why do you have to grow up into a life like this one? Why do you ever have to want women, want power, make money, make love, keep up a front, sell the act, suck around some booking agent, get gypped on the check—?

Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted my no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; to forgo even ambition when the end is gained - who can say this is not greatness?

Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, 'Tomorrow, success or failure won't matter much: and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.

Lower himself! says the lady, with a toss of her head. No man lowers himself by pursuing an honest calling. No man!

William Makepeace Thackeray

Nosotros, llenos de ambición y enfermos de espíritu, no podemos convivir con la selva, porque sólo toleramos el mundo cuando le hemos dado nuestro rostro y le hemos impuesto nuestra ley

Un chiste común dice que en Colombia los ricos quieren ser ingleses, los intelectuales quieren ser franceses, la clase media quiere ser norteamericana y los pobres quieren ser mexicanos.

Future? Homer said. He was a little embarrassed because all his life, from day to day, he had been busy mapping out a future, even if it was only a future for the next day. Well, he said, I don't know for sure, but I guess I'd like to be somebody some day.

You abandon most readily those works that have no destination other than your own wishes; there is no editor or producer standing there waiting for them... I've told every young writer I know to do the job all the way through even if they think it's no good. Then they'll have the precedent of having finished work.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Your fate awaits you. Accept it in body and spirit. To get used to the life you'll most likely be leading soon, get rid of your low-class trappings.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

William Shakespeare

Me, poor man, my library Was dukedom large enough.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance

True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

William Shakespeare

I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other.

Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.

If there is a good will, there is great way.