Quotes About Ambition

Tre mesi prima aspirava solo alla libertà e ora già non gli bastava, voleva la ricchezza; non era colpa sua, ma di Dio, che ha concesso all'uomo possibilità limitate ma desideri infiniti.

In politica, mio caro, lo sapete quanto me, non ci sono uomini ma idee; non sentimenti ma interessi; in politica non si uccide un uomo: si elimina un ostacolo, ecco tutto.

There fermented in that sublimated brain plans so vast, projects so tumultuous, that there remained no room for any capricious or material love—that sentiment which is fed by leisure and grows with corruption.

Alexandre Dumas

Danglars gehörte zu jenen Menschen, die mit einer Feder hinter dem Ohr und mit einem Tintenfass an Stelle des Herzens geboren werden.

Je suis venu à Paris avec quatre écus dans ma poche, et je me serais battu avec quiconque m'aurait dit que je n'étais pas en état d'acheter le Louvre.

Alexandre Dumas

Mais, pour lire les auteurs étrangers, je ne sais ni le grec, ni l'anglais, ni l'allemand.   - Parbleu  ! la belle affaire, vous apprendrez ces langues-là.   - Comment  ?   - Je n'en sais rien. Mais retenez ceci : on apprend toujours ce que l'on veut apprendre ;

Nada mas natural que el insensato que ignora su locura pretenda realizar cosas superiores a su poder. El débil habla de los grandes pesos que levanta; el tímido, de los gigantes que ha vencido; el pobre, de los tesoros que maneja; el más humilde campesino se llama Júpiter.

the pedant who has tried to put on his own head a crown which he stole from under a pillow--of

Remember, nowadays it's only by personal courage that a man can get on in this world.

The dream of poor Bazin had always been to serve a man of the cloth.

ambicionava voltar a ver em mim DESEJOS sobejamente intensos para submeter à realidade.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

What frightens me most is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring.

He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.

When both privileges and the disqualifications of class have been abolished and men have shattered the bonds which once held them immobile, the idea of progress comes naturally into each man's mind; the desire to rise swells in every heart at one, and all men want to quit their former social position. Ambition becomes a universal feeling.

The love of wealth is . . . to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do...

In China, where equality of conditions is very great and very old, a man passes from one public office to another only after submitting to a competition. This test is encountered at each step in his career, and the idea of it is so well introduced into mores that I remember having read a Chinese novel in which the hero after many vicissitudes finally touches the heart of his mistress by passing an examination well. Great ambitions breathe uneasily in such an atmosphere.

No man can think, feel, will, nor even dream, without everything being defined, conditioned, limited, directed by a goal which floats before him.

There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

Perhaps the most important principle for the good algorithm designer is to refuse to be content.

The highest places are always slippery: Men's eyes dazzle when they are carried up to them; and falls from them are mortal. Few kings or tyrants, says Juvenal, go down to the grave in peace...