Quotes About Ambition

If she could do it, there was no reason she shouldn't." -The inheritance games

Well then, Heiress. Game on.

Why was pushing yourself more important than what she wanted?

I didn't want to be the glass ballerina or the knife. I wanted to prove, at least to myself, that I was something.

If I were a boy," Thea told him with a Southern belle smile, "people would just call me driven." "Thea." Constantine frowned at her. "Right." Thea dabbed at her lips with her napkin. "No feminism at the dinner table." This time, I couldn't bite back the snort. Point, Thea.

The world is your motherfaxing oyster. It's okay to want things.

Wo ein Wille ist, da ist auch ein Weg

If anyone can make it to another world, it's Theodore Finch.

I think of something my mom used to say, about how as scary as it is to go after dreams, it's even scarier not to.

Too many people in this world think small is the best they can do. Not you, Libby Strout. You weren't born for small! You don't know how to do small! Small is not in you!

He [Eugène Rougon] believed exclusively in himself; where another saw reasons, Rougon possessed convictions; he subordinated everything to the incessant aggrandisement of his own ego. Despite being utterly devoid of real self-indulgence, he nevertheless indulged in secret orgies of supreme power.

When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.

La certitude d'avoir empêche de désirer.

Il y avait des hommes si ambitieux qu'ils auraient torché les chefs, pour les entendre seulement dire merci.

There she stood, by herself, amidst all her treasures, with a whole horde of men grovelling at her feet. Like those dreaded monsters of old whose lairs were littered with bones, she was walking on skulls and surrounded by cataclysms.

Now we need something else...and I should be the one person to be reckoned with! (37)

a kind of breathing space in a Paris that was too small, too stuffy for the ambition in their breasts (65)

You see, everything is fine so long as you make money by it." These last words seemed to freeze the serious men. The conversation dropped flat, and each appeared to avoid his neighbour's eyes.

Alors, Nana, tout de suite, entama La Faloise. Il postulait depuis longtemps l'honneur d'être ruiné par elle, afin d'être parfaitement chic.

the vague feeling of ambitions in common, the awakening of a higher intelligence among the vulgar herd of dunces and dunderheads they had to contend with in class (27)

to study the ambitions and appetites of a family launched upon the modern world, making superhuman efforts but always failing because of its own nature and the influences upon it, almost getting there only then to fall back again, and ending up by producing veritable moral monsters, the priest, the murderer, the artist. The times are in turmoil, and it is this turmoil of the moment which I shall depict. (vii)

He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

he was always greedy; though what he grasps with one hand he flings away wit the other.

one loving and desiring to esteem; and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it.