Quotes About Ambition

One place like another. That was true enough, he thought. Even the merchant seamen were the same. Every ship was the last. One more voyage, just enough pay and bounty saved, and it would be used to buy a little alehouse, a chandlery, a smallholding from some country squire. But it never seemed to happen, unless the man was thrown on the beach in peacetime, or rejected as a useless cripple. The sea always won in the end. The

It's not enough to be Hungarian, you must have talent too.

quell'Austriaco un po' scansafatiche che progettava tanto lavoro per i tedeschi...

The modern individual is committed to being successful, not to being a person. He belongs rightly to the 'action generation' whose motto is 'do more but feel less.

One of the ways in which our culture fosters the narcissistic personality is by its exaggerated emphasis upon the importance of winning. There is a popular slogan that says winning is the only thing that counts. Such an attitude minimizes human values and subordinates the feelings of others to this one overriding goal to win, to be on top, to be number one. But

The modern individual is committed to being successful, not to being a person.

I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12.

Even if we die at 100, we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

I've often wish'd that I had clear,For life, six hundred pounds a year;A handsome house to lodge a friend,A river at my garden's end,A terrace walk, and half a roodOf land set out to plant a wood.

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call;She comes unlook'd for, if she comes at all.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us, since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us, and to die,Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell aspiring to be angels men rebel.

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace;If not, by any means get wealth and place.

So pleas'd at first the tow'ring Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; Th'eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last: But those attain'd, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way; Th'increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

For when success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of Man's error and misery.

What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?

Roar'd for the handkerchief that caus'd his pain.   But see how oft ambitious aims are cross'd,   And chiefs contend 'till all the prize is lost!   The Lock, obtain'd with guilt, and kept with pain,   In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain: 110   With such a prize no mortal must be blest,   So heav'n decrees! with heav'n who can contest?

Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night

And thus he mused: "From here, indeedShall we strike terror in the Swede;And here a city, by our laborFounded, shall gall our haughty neighbor;'Here cut'—so Nature gives command—'Your window through on Europe: standFirm-footed by the sea, unchanging!' "

A man gazing on the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient