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Ambition displeases when it has been sated ... having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.
Ambition -- it is the last infirmity of noble minds.
J.M. BARRIE, The Twelve-Pound Look
Once set fire to the train of a man's ambition, and it will never cease to burn until it reaches the glittering "Catharine Wheel" by which he has been dazzled, or, failing that, has scorched the luckless aspirant to a cinder.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.
DAVID HUME, The History of England
On what strange stuff ambition feeds!
Ambition if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.
SUSAN SONTAG, The Benefactor
- Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
- The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
ALEXANDER POPE, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.
BARACK OBAMA, Daily Southtown, Feb. 19, 2005
A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm--it can creep, but it cannot fly.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Driftwood
Ambition is an uncomfortable companion many times. He creates a discontent with present surroundings and achievements; he is never satisfied but always pressing forward to better things in the future. Restless, energetic, purposeful, it is ambition that makes of the creature a real man.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON, The College Star (Southwest Texas State), June 19, 1929
Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.
EDWARD DAHLBERG, Alms for Oblivion
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
JAMES MADISON, The Federalist, Feb. 6, 1788
Ambition can creep as well as soar.
EDMUND BURKE, Letters on a Regicide Peace
We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY, Anne of Green Gables
Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness.
JOHN WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi
Ambition is the ecclesiastical lust.
DANIEL NOONAN, The Passion of Fulton Sheen
With the ambitious, the failure of one expedient is the suggestion of another; but with the irresolute, defeat usually occasions abandonment of purpose.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
There are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
BARACK OBAMA, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20. 2009
'Tis immortality to die aspiring.
GEORGE CHAPMAN, Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron
The greatest evil that fortune can bring to men is to endow them with feeble resources and yet to make them ambitious.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
Ambition is a "lucifer" applied to a barrel of gunpowder, the explosion of which, where it succeeds in blowing one man into a niche, dashes twenty to atoms.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY, The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower, by reason of our blindness. But alas, when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle where we have nothing to hope, but everything to fear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.
T. S. ELIOT, Murder in the Cathedral
Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Few are more unhappy than those who have great ambition, but little energy to urge it into activity.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
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