Quotes About Ambition

It seemed to me at the time - and still does now, only even more so - an act of madness for a man to pursue power when he could be sitting in the sunshine and reading a book

I fear there is in all men who achieve their life's ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction

Caesar is a different category of man altogether. Pompey merely wants to rule the world. Caesar longs to smash it to pieces and remake it in his own image.

there is in all men who achieve their life's ambition only a narrow line between dignity and vanity, confidence and delusion, glory and self-destruction.

But if you seek power," he said, almost to himself, "and if you are a new man, this is what you have to do. Nobody is ever going to simply hand it to you.

Loial, son of Arent, son of Halen, had secretly always wanted to be hasty.

On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.

Hammer the iron that lies on your anvil instead of daydreaming about working silver.

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers. -Anonymous notation found inked in the margin of a manuscript history (believed to date to the time of Arthur Hawkwing) of the last days of the Tovan Conclaves

Let most men have a finger and they will have the whole hand before you know. Let a clan cheif have a finger and he will have the entire arm.

You will do well.

Politics is a foggy mire full of snakes.

A young man chases shadows and runs from moonlight, and in the end he stabs himself in the foot with his own spear.

There was a difference between being proud of a grand fireplace in your hall and walking into the flames.

You tossed him aside for the White Tower. Why should you care if I pick him up?

Some men would call it brash, foolhardy, suicidal. The world was rarely changed by men who were unwilling to try being at least one of the three.

The sweetness of victory and the bitterness of defeat are alike a knife of dreams

A man is more than one drive, one goal. No woman wants that in a man. It seems to me that men who spend time making something of themselves—rather than professing their devotion—are the ones who get somewhere. Both with women, and with life itself.

On the heights, the paths are paved with daggers.

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, nor where the doer of deeds could have done them better. "On the contrary, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena—whose vision is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up again and again; who knows the great devotions, the great enthusiasms; who at best knows in the end the triumph of his achievement. "However

Viewed one way, then, for at least five years between 1904 and 1909, Ramanujan floundered- mostly out of school, without a degree, without contact with other mathematicians. And yet, was the cup half-empty or half-full?

He received no guidance, no stimulation, no money beyond the few rupees he made from tutoring. But for all the economic deadweight he represented, his family apparently discouraged him little- not enough, in any case, to stop him.

Just as the rag doll wanted to be an eagle, the donkey a lion and the monkey a queen, the zero put on airs and pretended to be a digit.