Quotes About Aspiration

My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.

For tho' we know what we ought to be; & what it would be very sweet & beautiful to be; yet we can't be it. That is most sad, too. Life is a long Dardenelles, My Dear Madam, the shores whereof are bright with flowers, which we want to pluck, but the bank is too high; & so we float on & on, hoping to come to a landing-place at last . . .

As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors.

Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing. So,now, let us add Moby Dick to our blessing, and step from that. Leviathan is not the biggest fish; I have heard of Krakens.

With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies

Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny.

many of my achievements have been bittersweet to me because they are things my mother once hoped to accomplish but never got the time to do. I've visited a dozen foreign countries. I went to my brother's wedding. I saw the first day of a new century.

He who jumps for the moon and gets it not leaps higher than he who stoops for a penny in the mud.

It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better...

Keep alive the dream; for as long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living.

keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve.

Youths are passed through schools that don't teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don't exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.

Blacks were working as hard as they could to become a part of the system; I could not relate to their goals. These brothers still believed in making it in the world. They talked about it loud and long, expressing the desire for families, houses, cars, and so forth. Even at that time I did not want those things. I wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me.

It's inspiration that counts, not the drill.

Still humping the American Dream

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that we can't BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

And only those who can see above and beyond the American goal of respectable mediocrity can enjoy a life that leads to anything but a struggle to attain that end.

Those were the good mornings, when the sun was hot and the air was quick and promising, when the Real Business seemed right on the verge of happening and I felt that if I went just a little faster I might overtake that bright and fleeting thing that was always just ahead.

We are going out again in search of the American dream.

Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off." —J. Conrad

The bhakta's approach include repeating God's name, as in praying without ceasing "keep the name of the Lord spinning in the midst of all your activities." Washing or weaving, planting or shopping, imperceptibly but indelibly these verbal droplets of aspiration soak down into the subconscious, loading it with the divine.

They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realised that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.

They say we're here because of desire. In our desire to live better than others, we are cruel to each other.

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.