Quotes About Ambition

What is more mortifying than to feel you've missed the Plum for want of courage to shake the Tree?

A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow isthe higher achievement.

Aim high. You may still miss the target but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

Success demands singleness of purpose.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

we should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust body, speech and mind; and stretching out in inconceivable nonaction, in the unstructured matrix, the actuality of emptiness, where the natural perfection of reality lies, we should gaze at the uncontrived sameness of every experience, all conditioning and ambition resolved with finality.

The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained in sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upwards in the night.

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Dreaming of a tomorrow, which tomorrow, will be as distant then as 'tis today.

I'm not stupid. I would like to have some businesses that grow so I won't have to be out there on the road when I'm 44.

When I was in my 20s I wasn't sure of myself. Now I can really stretch. I don't have to stay in the box. At this point I can say to myself, So what if I fall, so what? I'm going to get back up.

I always knew I wanted to be a performer, and my mother started taking me to dance classes when I was five. My mother is a teacher, my father works at an insurance company. When I said I wanted to be a performer, people went, "Yeah, right." You don't do that where I come from.

I'm satisfied. I am progressively making my life and my name in the surest and purest manner. If I catch on in the theater, as I think I will, all the doors will gladly open wide for me.

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

However boldly their warm blood was spilt, Their life was shame, their epitaph was guilt; And this they knew and felt, at least the one, The leader of the hand he had undone,-- Who, born for better things, had madly set His life upon a cast, which linger'd yet.

What is the end of Fame? 't is but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper,' To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.