|
|
Quotations on Ambition
| |
<< Back to Subject List
When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled by great ambitions.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Drift-Wood, 1857
Ambition... The glorious fault of angels and of gods.
~ Alexander Pope - Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, 1717
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. ~ Epictetus - Discourses, c. A.D. 100
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.
~ George Eliot
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly. ~ Horace
Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions.
~ David Hume
Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices: so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping. ~ Jonathan Swift
Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong.
~ Vita Sackville-West - No Signposts in the Sea, 1961
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. ~ William Blake
I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
~ John Keats - letter to J.A. Hessey, Oct. 9, 1818
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on t'other [the other side]. ~ William Shakespeare - Macbeth, I, viii
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below. ~ Lord Byron
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
~ Robert Browning - Adrea del Sarto, 1855
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. ~ Joseph Conrad
It is the constant fault and inseparable evil quality of ambition, that it never looks behind it.
~ Seneca
Aut Ceasar, aut nihil. Either Caesar or nothing. ~ Cesare Borgia - motto, c. 1500
Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far. ~ Euripides - Rhesus, 5th cent. B.C.
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
~ Sir Walter Raleigh - attributed, c. 1585, [Legend has it that Raleigh scratched this on a window pane. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have added underneath: "If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."]
Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down. ~ Wilson Mizner
The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune.
~ William Penn
The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves. ~ Herbert N. Casson
A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. ~ George Jean Nathan
Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens. ~ William Lilly
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment. ~ Thomas Otway
There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves. ~ Arthur P. Stanley
<< Back to Subject List
|