Ambition Quotes - Page 28

• Flesh and blood,
  You, brother mine, that entertain'd ambition,
  Expell'd remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian-
  Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong-
  Would here have kill'd your king, I do forgive thee,
  Unnatural though thou art.

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Strong, Brother

  William Shakespeare (1867). “The Works of William Shakespeare”, p.18

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• You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

  Zadie Smith

  Strong, New York, Reality

  "Zadie Smith On Manhattan’s ‘Sociopathic’ Ambition" By Carolyn Gregoire, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 10, 2014.

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• A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth
  her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.

  Washington Irving

  Heart, Adventure, Soul

  Washington Irving (1835). “The complete works of Washington Irving in one volume with a memoir of the author”, p.246

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• We pledge our loyalty; we affirm our determination to be of good courage; we declare, sometimes even publicly, that come what may we will do the right thing, that we will stand for the right cause, that we will be true to ourselves and to others. Then the pressures begin to build. Sometimes these are social pressures. Sometimes they are personal appetites. Sometimes they are false ambitions. There is a weakening of the will. There is a softening of discipline. There is capitulation. And then there is remorse, self-accusation, and bitter tears of regret.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Loyalty, Determination, Regret

  "And Peter Went Out and Wept Bitterly". General Conference, www.lds.org. April 1979.

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• One of the great tragedies we witness almost daily is the tragedy of men of high aim and low achievement. Their motives are noble. Their proclaimed ambition is praiseworthy. Their capacity to achieve is great. But their discipline is weak. They succumb to indolence. Appetite robs them of will.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Men, Discipline, Tragedy

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• The teacher not only shapes the expectations and ambitions of her pupils, but she also influences their attitudes toward their future and themselves. If she is unskilled, she leaves scars on the lives of youth, cuts deeply into their self-esteem, and distorts their image of themselves as human beings. But if she loves her students and has high expectations of them, their self-confidence will grow, their capabilities will develop, and their future will be assured.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Teacher, Attitude, Self Esteem

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• If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?

  Blaise Pascal

  Pride, Men, Knowing

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.128, Simon and Schuster

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• There’s always a stigma attached to the word ‘ambition’ and women. I’ve embraced it. Ambition is NOT a four-letter word and women have to embrace that.

  Tory Burch

  Four, Letters, Embrace

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• I have no ambition. I just have a very loving duty given to me in my spiritual heritage of the Himalayan Masters who have passed down this duty from generation to generation, perhaps for thousands of generations: The world has misery, the world has suffering. Do what you can to reduce the pain. Do what you can to soothe people's minds. Don't just counsel, Mr. Therapist ... console.

  Swami Veda Bharati

  Spiritual, Pain, People

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• I find ambition really attractive too - if someone's good at something they love doing. I want someone who is driven.

  Harry Styles

  Want, Driven, Attractive

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• The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that.

  David Herbert Donald

  Careers, Accomplishment, Political

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• Heirs Holdings has the ambition to generate at least a quarter of Nigeria's power consumption needs in the next five years

  Tony Elumelu

  Years, Needs, Heirs

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• Teamwork is not a matter of persuading yourself and your colleagues to set aside personal ambitions for the greater good. It's a matter of recognizing that your personal ambitions and the ambitions of the team are one and the same. That's the incentive.

  Greg Brown

  Teamwork, Incentives, Matter

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• Above all, as the keynote of all Democratic policy, in passing upon any question, let the controlling aim and ambition be to keep the road open for private enterprise and personal initiative.

  John W. Davis

  Politics, Initiative, Passing

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• The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader, and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Father, Eye, Son

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2005). “Frankenstein”, p.36, Prestwick House Inc

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• Furthermore, what profit was it to me that I, rascally slave of selfish ambitions that I was, read and understood by myself as many books as I could get concerning the so-called liberal arts?...I had turned my back to the light and my face to the things it illuminated, and so no light played upon my own face, or on the eyes that perceived them.

  Saint Augustine

  Art, Selfish, Book

  Saint Augustine (2010). “The Confessions”, p.198, New City Press

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• The true way is the middle one, halfway between deserving a place and pushing oneself into it.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Way, Pushing, Middle

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.115, Shambhala Publications

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• But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.

  Walker Percy

  Giving Up, Ordinary, Said

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• Christian contentment, therefore, is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at His disposal in the place He appoints, at the time He chooses, with the provision He is pleased to make.

  Sinclair B. Ferguson

  Christian, Contentment, Fruit

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• An entrepreneur is someone who, almost artistically, designs a living entity which embodies the values, beliefs, and ambitions of the creator

  Jake Lodwick

  Design, Entrepreneur, Belief

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• My ambition comes from my passion: finding what I love and then expanding on that.

  Miranda Kerr

  Passion, Expanding, Findings

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• I will not become a Napoleon nor an Alexander, and labour for my own ambition; but I will labour for freedom and for the moral well-being of man.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Men, Moral, Well Being

  Lajos Kossuth, Francis William Newman (1854). “Select Speeches of Kossuth”, p.44

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• The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

  Walter Lippmann

  Men, Animal, Law

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.129, Harvard University Press

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• Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Fashion, Wish, Weakness

  Michel de Montaigne (1925). “The essays of Montaigne”

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• The desire to create continually is vulgar and betrays jealousy, envy, ambition. If one is something one really does not need to make anything --and one nonetheless does very much. There exists above the ''productive'' man a yet higher species.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Jealousy, Betrayal, Creativity

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.97, Cambridge University Press

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