Ambition Quotes - Page 40

• A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love.

  A. O. Scott

  Loyalty, Honesty, Drama

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• It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be ob-tained or retained.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Mistake, Party, Mean

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

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• As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Money, Passion, Men

  Benjamin Disraeli (1859). “Henrietta Temple a Love Story by Benjamin Disraeli”, p.340

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• Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Stupidity, Serious, Folly

  "Chamfort: Reflections on Life, Love & Society". Book by Nicolas Chamfort, 1795.

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• Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.

  Jonathan Swift

  Government, Sacred, Should

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• Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and animated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy.

  Quintilian

  Boys, Giving, Emulation

  Quintilian (1805). “Quinctilian's Institutes of Eloquence: Or, The Art of Speaking in Public, in Every Character and Capacity”, p.26

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• Your honors here may serve you for a time, as it were for an hour, but they will be of no use to you beyond this world. Nobody will have heard a word of your honors in the other life. Your glory, your shame, your ambitions, and all the treasures for which you push hard and sacrifice much will be like wreaths of smoke. For these things, which you mostly seek, and for which you spend your life only tarry with you while you are on this side of the flood.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Sacrifice, Honor, Use

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• All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. If there be, amongst the sons of men, a single exception to this maxim, the divine Socrates may be allowed to put in the strongest claim. It was his high ambition to deserve, by deeds, not by creeds, an unrevealed heaven, and by works, not by faith, to enter an unpromised land.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Son, Men, Land

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.155

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• A man looketh on his little one as a being of better hope; in himself ambition is dead, but it bath a resurrection in his son.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Children, Son, Men

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• Longing, it may be, is the gift no other gift supplies.

  Emily Dickinson

  Desire, May, Longing

  Emily Dickinson, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1971). “The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.288, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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• It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beautiful, Grief, Yield

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• Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

  Honore de Balzac

  Daughter, Children, Envy

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• To lunch with the important ... that should be the daily goal of those for whom life is not a playground but a ladder.

  Rose Macaulay

  Lunch, Goal, Important

  Rose Macaulay (Dame.) (1923). “Mystery at Geneva”

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• The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Errors, Suffering, Mountain

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.19

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• When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Ambitious, Stuff

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 3, sc. 2, l. [97]

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• To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Forever, Shining

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.356

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• The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Heart, Care, Sake

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Philip Kelley, Ronald Hudson (1987). “The Brownings' correspondence”

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• The game of keeping what one has is never so exciting as the game of getting.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Games, Exciting

  Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (1979). “I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader”, p.153, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism.

  Max Lerner

  Vanity, Spy, Desire

  Max Lerner (1959). “The unfinished country: a book of American symbols”

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• It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Thinking, Advice

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Rambler”, p.410

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• What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

  May Sarton

  Desire, Made

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• if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem.

  Natalie Clifford Barney

  Ifs

  Natalie Clifford Barney, Anna Livia (1992). “A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney”, p.19, New Victoria Publishers

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• Change may be the vitalizing wind blowing through the house of life, but it is not an abiding force. We need permanent things to soak peace into us as well as progress - the beauty of the earth, seedtime and harvest, the smiles of lovers, the joy of the young in being alive, pride in craftsmanship. Why, oh why must we let ourselves forget these lasting treasures in an age of consuming ambition, speed madness and accumulated goods that leave us no chance to live? If we cannot be contented with a little no wealth will ever satisfy us.

  Helen Keller

  Pride, Wind Blowing, Joy

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• To eat at another's table is your ambition's height.
  [Lat., Bona summa putes, aliena vivere quadra.]

  Juvenal

  Tables, Height, Eating

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• Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.

  Emma Goldman

  Success, Mean, Soul

  Alphonso Lingis, Emma Goldman (1996). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Humanities Press International

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