Quotes About Ambition

Chase the vision regardless of what other people do, say, or think.

Successful people who wish to maintain their successes must make the decision to do so.

To dwell on the lack thereof is a mental trap the majority of visionaries are taught to do.

But I did not want to be good. I wanted to be a writer.

What is the American fetish about highways? They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers. Because something is after them, Black Herman adds. But what is after them? They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress.

Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.

Absolute power is universally coveted, though all know that an absolute ruler has an anxious life and usually a violent death.

A wise man cares not for that which he cannot have.

By asking for the impossible we obtain the possible.

By asking for the impossible, obtain the best possible.

He who begins many things finishes but few.

Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature…. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.

I am a Saturn who dreams of being a Mercury, and everything I write reflects these two impulses.

The only books I recognize as mine are those I must still write.

Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement.

Quello che vorresti é l'aprirsi d'uno spazio e d'un tempo astratti ed assoluti in cui muoverti seguendo una traiettoria esatta e tesa; ma quando ti sembra di riuscirci t'accorgi d'esser fermo, bloccato, costretto a ripetere tutto da capo.

Undertakings based on an inner tenacity have to be mute and obscure; one has only to declare or glory in them and it all appears silly, without meaning, even petty.

Most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it.

La letteratura vive solo se si pone degli obbiettivi smisurati, anche al di là d'ogni possibilità di realizzazione.

I have to say that most of the books I've written and those I have it in mind to write originate in the idea that writing such a book seemed impossible to me. When I'm convinced that a certain type of book is completely beyond the capacities of my temperament and my technical skills, I sit down at my desk and start writing it.

I ja tak?e chc? tylko jednego: by? kim?, kto wie, czego chce!

it is always about themselves that the living ask, not about those who are to come. One man is concerned with leaving behind him an illustrious reputation, another wants his shame to be forgotten; all would like to follow the thread of their own actions' consequences; but

Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have function." — Italo Calvino

But in essence they had both remained in the era of the Wars of Succession, she with artillery in her head, he with genealogical trees; she who dreamed for us children a rank in an army, it didn't matter which, he who saw us instead married to some grand duchess elector of the empire . . . Despite all this, they were excellent parents, but so distracted that the two of us were left to grow up almost on our own.