Quotes About Ambition

The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts," said Mr. Wilde. "You are speaking of the King in Yellow," I groaned, with a shudder. "He

My three Ps: passion, patience, perseverance. You have to do this if you've got to be a filmmaker.

Why was it given to Darwin, less ambitious, less imaginative, and less learned than many of his colleagues, to discover the theory sought after by others so assiduously? How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance?

On the other hand, we do often pursue such things with, at the very least, an unbalanced view of the future. We spend more time envisioning the perks that a promotion will bring than envisioning the headaches it will bring.

status is a resource.39 If status expands your access to food or sex, then it makes sense to seek status in the abstract, just as it makes sense to seek money even though you can't eat it.

By adolescence, if not earlier, people are getting feedback about their market value, feedback that shapes their self-esteem and thus affects how high they aim their sights.

Few women would prefer an unemployed and rudderless man to an ambitious and successful one, all other things being even roughly equal; and few men would choose an obese, unattractive, and dull woman over a shapely, beautiful, sharp one.

Me tembló el alma. ¿Qué hacer, qué podría hacer para triunfar, para tener dinero, mucho dinero? [...] comprendí que nunca me resignaría a la vida penuriosa que sobrellevaban naturalmente la mayoría de los hombres

Qué es lo que puedo hacer yo? Cuando tuvo la idea, cuando una pequeñita idea lo cercioró de que podía defraudar a sus patrones, experimentó la alegría de un inventor. ¿Robar? ¿Cómo no se le había ocurrido antes? Y Erdosain se asombró de su incapacidad llegando hasta reprocharse falta de iniciativa, pues en esa época (tres meses antes de los sucesos narrados) sufría necesidades de toda naturaleza, a pesar de que diariamente pasaban por

Me tembló el alma. ¿Qué hacer, que podría hacer para triunfar, para tener dinero, mucho dinero?...Y no sabiendo si pudiera asesinar a alguien, si al menos hubiera tenido a algún pariente, rico, a quien asesinar y responderme, comprendí que nunca me resignaría a la vida penuriosa que sobrellevan naturalmente la mayoría de los hombres. De pronto se hizo tan evidente en mi conciencia la certeza de que ese anhelo de distinción me acompañaría por el mundo.

No podré tener más ilusiones. A los otros hombres los mueve alguna ilusión. Unos creen que tener dinero los hará felices, y trabajan como bestias para acumular oro. Y así los sorprende la muerte. Otros creen que con el poder serán dichosos. Y cuando les llega al poder, la sensibilidad para gustarlo se les hizo pedazos entre todas las bellaqueríasque ejecutaron para conseguir el poder

In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats

We play at believing ourselves imortal. We delude oursleves in the appraisal of our own works and in our perpetual misappraisal of the works of others. See you at the Nobel, writers say, as one might say: see you in hell.

Which is to say, boys, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

I'm seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I'm in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I'm an orphan, and someday I'll be a lawyer. That's what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night.

Only great challenges make it worthwhile to pack up and move all one's books.

Of course, they were other things too. Sometimes they were even everything all together, but not fame, which was rooted in delusion and lies, if not ambition. Also, fame was reductive. Everything that ended in fame and everything that issued from fame was inevitably diminished. Fame's message was unadorned. Fame and literature were irreconcilable enemies.

The road to wealth is sown with false starts and failures that should in no way discourage the poor who make good or our neighbors with new found riches. We have to give it our all.

Younger than Morini and Pelletier, Espinoza studied Spanish literature, not German literature, at least for the first two years of his university career, among other sad reasons because he dreamed of being a writer.

When I was an adolescent I wanted to be a Jew, a Bolshevik, black, homosexual, a junkie, half-crazy, and--the crowning touch-- a one-armed amputee, but all I became was a literature professor.

Which is as if to say, boys, I said, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

Esta es mi última transmisión desde el planeta de los monstruos. No me sumergiré nunca más en el mar de mierda de la literatura. En adelante escribiré mis poemas con humildad y trabajaré para no morirme de hambre y no intentaré publicar.

book on Archimboldi, a book that might be the grand Archimboldian opus, the pilot fish that would swim for a long time beside the great black shark of the German's oeuvre, or

Someday Neruda and Octavio Paz will shake hands. Sooner or later Paz will make room on Olympus for Neruda. But we will always be on the outside.