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Ambition like a liquid ruby stains.
SAMUEL R. DELANY, Babel-17
It's no secret ambition bites the nails of success.
An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of Fortune.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
All ambition owes its attractiveness to effort and desire rather than success. We find the object to which we attached so much value is in itself of little value whatever; it is our effort to obtain it which envalues it.
ANTHONY LISLE, The Westminster Review, Jan. 1914
- There is no climax in Ambition's scope,
- Behold her wrestling with the angel, Hope,
- And beating back the Demon of Despair,
- Yet looking for a brighter crown to wear;
- Despair enchains her, Hope her transient guest,
- Unfurls her wings, and leaves her still unblest;
- But naught can keep her quenchless ardor back;
- She bears the struggling Demon in her track,
- Mounts on the wind's wild wings, her zeal on fire;
- And treads the paths to which her dreams aspire.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN, "Ambition's Climax"
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Life Thoughts
Never doubt what small men will do for great power.
PAOLO BACIGALUPI, The Windup Girl
Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.
HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby Dick
They that soar too high, often fall hard.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
- Lo, as the last proud empire mourns her fall,
- Ambition weeps that she hath conquered--all,
- Lifts up her hands, that earth can never feel,
- And pants for other worlds to conquer still.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN, "Ambition's Climax"
Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
- Like a goddess on her azure hill,
- The star of my ambition,
- The mistress of my dream;
- A thing apart,
- That we can worship, but not touch;
- A wild desire,
- That, in the madness of the thought,
- Soars higher in its dignity,
- And leaves me weeping in the dust.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, "Ambition," Imogen and Other Poems
Without a goal, a life is nothing. Sometimes the goal becomes a man's entire life, an all-consuming passion. But once that goal is achieved, what then? Oh, poor man, what then?
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, Dune: House Atreides
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