Quotes About Ambition

In looking forward to what remains to be done, my readers will perhaps echo what my publishers say, "Please God to spare you!" I only ask to be less tormented by men and things than I have hitherto been since I began this terrific labor. I

Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten years somewhere below where he started.

La sociedad, el mundo, nuestras costumbres, vistos de cerca, me han revelado el peligro de mi creencia inocente y la superfluidad de mis fervientes trabajos. Estas provisiones son inútiles al ambicioso. ¡El que persigue la fortuna ha de llevar poco peso en la mochila!

This poor young man had felt there the gnawing of that burning poverty which is a sort of crucible from which great talents are to emerge as pure and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjected to any shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of their unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and get into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with the constant work by which they coerce their cheated appetites.

Ça se croit grand parce que ça fait de petites choses avec de grands capitaux.

You have not much luxury here," said the judge, gravely, looking round the room. "Well, my son, if we wish to be something great, we must begin by being nothing.

I begin to perceive," said La Briere, smiling, "that there is something poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers.

He had never dined with a duchess, never received a prize, never been interviewed, never produced anything which the public could understand, nor experienced anything since his schoolboy amours which nice people could regard as romantic. He was, in fact, an authentic scientist.

Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working.

The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air.

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.

To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring to explain before dozens of popeyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand -- fifty thousand -- a million a year, and all this by the Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine.

I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves, And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea.

why do we waste ourselves at twenty scrambling for positions just so we can work for someone else?

I have spent myself on all kinds of things I have advanced much politically but I have written little and moreover have written it badly.

he would dare to transform China and make it great. He would build his own Great Walls.

Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them.

Every actor dreams of getting a big break, a big opportunity.

For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education, you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough.

This was not the career she'd dreamed of as an ambitious seventeen-year-old, but now it was hard to remember ever feeling innocent and audacious enough to dream of a certain type of life, as if you got to choose how things turned out.

She didn't come from old money or new money but from never-quite-enough money.

Madison rolled her eyes. "No. I won't care if people say mean things to me, because I'll be grown up. I can just say, 'Who cares? I'm going to France.' " Ah.

It's hard to want something so badly and give it your all and then not get it. There's this idea that all you need to do is believe in yourself,

Alice had yearned to be a little disruptive, but she couldn't work out how you got started.