"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dodgson's books on mathematics which appear in this Memoir, had a similar experience with one of these "cranks." This circle-squarer selected 3.125 as the value for "pi," and Mr. Hagger, who was fired with Mr. Dodgson's ambition to convince his correspondent of his error, failed as signally ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... The worldly ambition of the old soldier, excited by the flattering remarks of the duke, imparted itself to Wenlock. Could he make up his mind to turn draper's assistant in the City, as he had been meditating doing yesterday, while so brilliant a prospect had opened itself up before him? The ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... ambition of my literary life to write a book about the United States, and I had made up my mind to visit the country with this object before the intestine troubles of the United States government had commenced. I have not allowed the division among ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Now he's up to his ears In the choicest of stocks. He owns endless blocks Of houses and shops, And the stream never stops Pouring into his banks. I suppose that he ranks Pretty near to the top. What I have wouldn't sop His ambition one tittle; And yet with my little I don't care to trade With the bargain he made. Just watch him to-day— See him trying to play. He's come back for blue skies. But they're in a new guise— Winter's here, all is gray, The birds are away, The meadows are brown, The leaves lie aground, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... softest tones yet, He has won some of us back with His strong tender love. And now let the voice ring out with great gladness—we won ones may be the pathway back to God for the others. That is His earnest desire. That should be our dominant ambition. For that purpose He has ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... place, with an eye quick to see the possibilities of the situation, with a brain to plan and a hand to execute. His name was Francois Blanc, the head of the great gambling establishment at Homburg. Vast as were his ambition and achievements, he was a man of the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the very depths of man's understanding the real sense of the word fall, which occurs in every language. He appealed to the most widely-spread traditions in evidence of this one true origin, explaining, with much lucidity, the passion all men have for rising, mounting—an instinctive ambition, the perennial ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... in the multitude of human actions and by the crowd of delightful people who fill his four-hundred odd pages.... It deserves a high place among the novels that deal with American life. No recent American novel save one has sought to cover so broad a canvas, or has created so strong an impression of ambition ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... said my aunt. 'Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and much more, I suppose? Well: go ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 'Memorials' to which I have alluded give a most vivid and painful account of the struggle between ambition and political consistency which followed upon the offer of the Chancellorship by the Duke of Grafton to one who was pledged by his previous action to the Rockingham party. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... What does he expect to get out of it? He don't do it just for the fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts along the line of ambition and extraordinary hustling in the marketplaces, forums, shooting-galleries, lyceums, battle-fields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of the civilized and vice versa places of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... young men who have been early impressed by the circumstances of power and grandeur, meant to enter the lists fully armed; the burning ambition of conquest possessed him already; perhaps he was conscious of his powers, but as yet he knew neither the end to which his ambition was to be directed, nor the means of attaining it. In default of the pure and sacred love that fills a life, ambition may become something very noble, subduing to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... Bo's blunt and characteristic way of advising the elimination of Helen's superficialities. It sank deep. Helen had no retort. Her ambition, as far as the West was concerned, had most assuredly not been for such a wild, unheard-of jaunt as this. But possibly the West—a living from day to day—was one succession of adventures, trials, tests, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... unless men are guided by the advice and judgment of a conscience founded on religion, they can give no security that they will be either good subjects, faithful servants of the public, or honest in their mutual dealings; since there is no other tie through which the pride, or lust, or avarice, or ambition of mankind will not certainly ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... joyous music. Frail she seems compared with Lela's well-rounded figure, but if she has not equal strength, she has elasticity; and if more energy and power is indicated by the physiognomy of Lela, Majoli has ambition and judgment to compensate. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... morning, Sir W. Batten and I by water (calling his son Castle by the way, between whom and I no notice at all of his letter the other day to me) to Deptford, and after a turn in the yard, I went with him to the Almes'-house to see the new building which he, with some ambition, is building of there, during his being Master of Trinity House; and a good worke it is, but to see how simply he answered somebody concerning setting up the arms of the corporation upon the door, that and any thing else he did not deny it, but said he would ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... are the flower of the American workingmen. They are strong, efficient men. They have become members of those unions through competition for place. Every fit workman in the United States will be possessed by the ambition to become a member of the favored unions. The Oligarchy will encourage such ambition and the consequent competition. Thus will the strong men, who might else be revolutionists, be won away and their strength used ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... perhaps," he proceeded, while Lady Beauchamp, sorely tried, tapped her fingers on the table, and her foot upon the floor,—"you do not know, that, when I was a boy, and until two or three years ago, my desire and ambition were to be a minister of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... It was an easy going life. The work was light. My audiences were comin' to know me, and to depend on me. I had no need, after a time, to be worrying; we were always sure of a good hoose, wherever we went. But I was no quite content. I was always being eaten, in yon time, wi' a lettle de'il o' ambition, that gnawed at me, and ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the characteristic of this country, and which the prosperity of this country so miserably fosters. I mean that ambitious spirit, to use a great word, but I know no other word to express my meaning—that low ambition which sets every one on the look-out to succeed and to rise in life, to amass money, to gain power, to depress his rivals, to triumph over his hitherto superiors, to affect a consequence and a gentility which he had not before, to affect to have an opinion on high ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... the poet Becquer[1] in the golden days of his youth, when his veins were swelling with health, when his heart was fired with ambition, and in his ears was ringing the joyous ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... he started a County Fair to spur the ambition of the Negro farmers of the county. This Negro County Fair under his guidance grew and flourished from year to year. The whites maintained a separate County Fair. Finally the two fairs were combined, and now one of the most ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... liked that little Chebe girl who used to come now and then and play in the avenues at Savigny! In her, at least, he detected the strain of the common people like himself, with a sprinkling of ambition and envy, suggested even in those early days by a certain little smile at the corner of the mouth. Moreover, the child exhibited an ingenuous amazement and admiration in presence of his wealth, which flattered ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... up in front of the tent and stood waiting, hardly knowing what to do. The sobs continued, with a note of pain in them that went straight to Phil's tender heart. The sight or sound of physical suffering made a special appeal to her. It was Phyllis's secret ambition some day to study medicine, an ambition which she had confided to no one save Madge. Although the figure she had seen was almost that of a woman, the sobbing sounded like that of a child. There was no other noise in the tent, so Phil ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... easily read the innermost secrets of the heart, must know I have not been able to discern the happiness for myself in this union that my soul would crave, or that you led me to expect in wedded love. If my ambition irresistibly impelled me to fill the external destinies of mankind, to become a monarch of unsurpassed power and magnificence, then would Nu-nah be the royal consort absolutely adapted for such pride and pomp. But, you know, O Father, ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... "My one ambition," she said, with a bewitching little laugh, rather plaintive, I thought, "is to drive a ball far enough so that there will be some difficulty in finding it. It must be jolly to hit a ball straight out so far that you cannot tell ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... a small-footed woman must be one of rank, but this is an error. It is a matter of family ambition, even among the poor, to have in the family at least one such deformity. Gentlemen marry only small-footed women, and their child might make a good match. If large-footed, this would be impossible; but such ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... King of Macedonia, in Greece; he was celebrated for his great ambition, and the number of his conquests; he overturned the Persian empire, and subdued many cities and provinces in ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... a man, I think he's about the average, ordinary young American, of the secretary type. He has little real ambition, but he has had a good berth with Joseph, and he has worked fairly hard to keep it. As a suspect, the notion is absurd. He wasn't ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... not the end of Graciella's troubles. Graciella had a heart, although she had suppressed its promptings, under the influence of a selfish ambition. She had thrown Ben Dudley over for the colonel; the colonel did not want her, and now she would have neither. Ben had been very angry, unreasonably angry, she had thought at the time, and objectionably rude in his manner. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and his Canadian friends have advised you from the beginning that my standing and influence in Canada was merely political; that I was aware of this, and was, therefore, determined to employ myself in political affairs in order to gratify my ambition. My assertions to the contrary were, of course, rejected and scorned by you. Well, nearly three years have elapsed since, by common consent, I have had nothing whatever to do with the civil affairs of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Scipio, when sovereign pontiff, as a private Roman kill Tiberius Gracchus for a slight encroachment upon the rights of this country; and shall we, her consuls, with persevering patience endure Catiline, whose ambition is to desolate a devoted world with ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... worthy of the title bestowed upon him,—"Principal Painter in Ordinary." The portraits commanded by the King were paid for independently. The remuneration for his works finally provided the artist with that brilliant and gorgeous life which had been his ambition for so long and which an assiduous industry had not been able to procure for him in Flanders. He had no less than six servants and several horses; at all periods, as we know, he always bestowed much care and refinement upon his toilet. Frequenting an elegant and frivolous court could not but develop ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... given in popular form by those who are well versed upon the subject, cannot help but be instructive and productive of a greater ambition on the part of the boy to take good care of his body. The following list of ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... grandness, as for its deep knowledge of human nature. He has comprehended thoroughly, as it seems to me, that struggle between self-abasement and self-conceit, between the exaggerated sense of sinfulness and the exaggerated ambition of saintly honour, which must have gone on in the minds of these ascetics—the temper which could cry out one moment ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the long and painful illness of my husband closed in death. He had been handicapped by years of ill health, and, although he had the intellectual power, the ability, the wings to spread, there was, alas, no surrounding air to bear them up! The ambition was there and the intense desire, but strength was lacking and he bore his affliction with sublime fortitude. For a while after his departure I felt akin to a ship lost at sea; my moorings were nowhere within sight. I had leaned on him through so many years of married ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... broad day. Angelique des Meloises was herself again. Her day-dream of ambition resumed its power. Her night-dream of love was over. Her fears vanished, her hopes were all alive, and she began to prepare for a possible morning call ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to talk more of Dungloe's attainment and ambition. He compared the trade turnover of $5,045 for the first year of the society with $375,000 for 1918. But there were more things to be done. The finest herring in the world swim the Donegal coast. Scots catch it. Irish buy it. Dungloe men wanted to fish, but the gombeen man would never lend money ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... doing her arithmetic; and on Sunday evening she had coaxed her mother to the piano, and begged her to sing "just this one song, please." Her mother sang very prettily—like Dot—and she had thrown a good deal of pathos into the old song, so that Betty's ambition was fired, and she had almost decided ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... cause to lament that they had been discovered by our navigators. It is not, indeed, likely that a measure of this kind should at any time seriously be adopted, because it cannot serve either the, purposes of public ambition, or private avarice; and, without such inducements, the captain has ventured to pronounce that it will ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... month is characterized by a rapid increase of activity in the formation of ideas, on the one hand, and by considerably greater certainty in the use of words, on the other. Ambition is developed and makes itself known by a frequent lainee (allein, alone). The child wants to undertake all sorts of things without help. He asks for various objects interesting to him, with the words Ding haben ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... climates, where every thing grows to your hand; yet they always seem to lie idle: Italy and Spain and Turkey and South America, and our own Gardens of Eden," with a bit of sarcastic smile. "The very ease of living seems to take the ambition out of one. Well, why shouldn't it? Even the bees, you know, were demoralized when they found they did not have to lay up for winter. Wouldn't those people come to be worse tramps and idlers? I'm sure the poor ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... below but augurs change, E'en with ev'ry passing hour. Future! mighty mystery! All the earthly goods that be, Fortune, glory, war's renown, King or kaiser's sparkling crown, Victory! with her burning wings, Proud ambition's covetings,— These may our grasp no more detain Than the free bird who doth alight Upon our roof, and takes its flight High ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... procreative faculty has crowned all, the child is born again, and comes into a new infancy—the infancy of manhood and womanhood. Here a new life opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives satisfaction no longer. Love takes new and deeper channels. Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher objects. Fresh motives address the soul, and urge it into new enterprises. Great cares and responsibilities settle slowly down upon its shoulders, and it braces itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and its relations ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... scattered, Strange their destiny and varied, Yet the tie of love and duty, Binds the teacher to the pupil, Binds the pupil to the teacher, Wheresoe'er their footsteps wander, Wheresoe'er their fate may lead them. May they ever fondly cherish All the dear associations, All the lessons of ambition, Taught and gained at Franklin College, Taught ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... men who were able to surrender themselves and all their interests to the pure and loyal service of their ideal were the men who made good, the victors crowned with glory and honor. The men who would not make that surrender, who sought selfish ends, who were controlled by personal ambition and the love of gain, who were willing to stoop to crooked means to advance their own fortunes, were the failures, the lost leaders, and, in some cases, the men whose names are embalmed in their own infamy. The ultimate secret of greatness is neither physical nor intellectual, but moral. It is ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... undying passion. Germany! fated to execration by future generations for that she ahs crucified the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Germany! for the balking of whose insolent and futile ambition, and for the crushing of whose archaic military madness we Canadians are tramping on this Dominion Day these English fields and these sweet English lanes 5,000 miles from our Western Canada which dear land we can not ever see ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... not much the matter with the brain of Brunel, Jr., but that little was enough; a competent railroad surveyor, a good bridge builder, he needed to be held within bounds when handling other people's funds; for the man's ambition would have lead him to undertake to bridge the Atlantic. He met with the speculators required in this very instance of the constructors of the Great Eastern. This monstrous ship has been described ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... detective whose talents, had not been recognized at headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been expressed in words. Though I had small reason for expecting great things of myself, I had always cherished the hope that if a big case came my way I should be found able to do something ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... in the infernal regions by having to roll uphill a huge stone, which always rolled down again as soon as it reached the top. Sisyphos is a type of avarice, never satisfied. The avaricious man reaches the summit of his ambition, and no sooner does he so than he finds the object of his desire ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... struggle between the orders the question of privilege had sometimes overshadowed the purely economic issue, and although a close scrutiny of those days of turmoil shows that the dominant note in the conflict was often a mere pretext meant to serve the personal ambition of the champions of the Plebs, yet the appearance rather than the reality of an issue imposes on the imagination of the mob, and political emancipation had been thought a boon even when hard facts had shown that its greater prizes had fallen ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Lysimachus, Mithrades, Nero, and Arcadius. The eunuch Aristonikos, under one of the Ptolemys, and another, Narces, under Justinian, led the armies of their sovereigns. These are, however, exceptional cases; as a rule, the result is as we observe in the domestic animals,—loss of spirit, vim, and ambition. The Church recognized this result, and, while the Hebraic law excluded eunuchs from participating in the priesthood as being imperfect and unclean, the Church reproached Origines and his monks and excluded eunuchs from ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... have I preserv'd you from a child, from all the arrows, malice, or ambition could shoot at you, and have I this for ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... bishops are content to hold their authority from the king's letters patents; others will needs have somewhat more they know not what of divine rights, &c., not acknowledging the power of the king. It is a relic still remaining of the venom of popish ambition, lurking in that seditious distinction and division between the power spiritual and civil. The safety of the State does not depend on the safety of the clergy, but on the entireness of the sovereign power."—Considerations ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... March Marston's ignorance of his real character at this time) was not only a subject of terror to the Indians inhabiting this region of the earth at that particular era in the world's history, but also a subject of intense curiosity. Hence, for many years past, it had been an object of ambition, on the part of the more courageous of the Indian warriors, to trace this terrible creature to his familiar haunts, and "beard ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... no guilt greater than to sanction ambition; no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot; no fault greater than the wish to be getting. Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... power, no disgrace but poverty and neglect. What charm of instruction can cure the mind that is stained with this disorder? What syren voice can awaken a desire of freedom, that is held to be meanness and a want of ambition? Or what persuasion can turn the grimace of politeness into real sentiments ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... development that awaits it. There is much that is seductive in our life, but I think it is not upon the higher impulses of our nature that such seductions act. I should think ill of the American who, for any causes of ambition,—any hope of wealth or rank,—or even for the sake of any of those old, delightful ideas of the past, the associations of ancestry, the loveliness of an age-long home,—the old poetry and romance that haunt these ancient villages and estates of England,—would give up the chance of ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... unexplored interiors. His papers on the fauna and flora made him known to scientific societies. And now he had come to a country practice—from choice. The penetrating power of his mind, acting like a corrosive fluid, had destroyed his ambition, I fancy. His intelligence is of a scientific order, of an investigating habit, and of that unappeasable curiosity which believes that there is a particle of a general truth in ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... Sucy had blown his brains out during the night. The upper ranks of society talked in various ways over this extraordinary event, and each person looked for the cause of it. According to the proclivities of each reasoner, play, love, ambition, hidden disorders, and vices, explained the catastrophe, the last scene of a drama begun in 1812. Two men alone, a marquis and former deputy, and an aged physician, knew that Philippe de Sucy was one of those strong men to whom God has given the unhappy ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... to believe, to hope it. Now for the minister and the peerage!" And from that time the root of Sir William Brandon's ambition spread with a firmer and more extended ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a national convention is not to please the vanity nor gratify the ambition of any individual, but to select a national standard bearer who will proudly lead the party in the campaign and be a credit to the party and an honor to the nation, if elected. Surely the Democracy of California can select candidates who can be depended upon ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... assemblies of barons, prelates, and legists held at the Louvre, in presence of the king, which several historians have considered to have been states- general, one of the crown's most intimate advisers, William of Plasian, proposed, against Boniface, a form of accusation which imputed to him, beyond his ambition and his claims to absolutism, crimes as improbable as they were hateful. It was demanded that the Church should be governed by a lawful pope, and the king, as defender of the faith, was pressed to appeal to the convocation of a general council. On the 24th of June, in the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... with nothing very remarkable in his appearance, except that he was tall and thin, and had a long bushy beard, now somewhat grizzled. The aforesaid individual, Mr Popples, was neat and clean, and had really good manners; his great ambition being to rise in the world, though he had begun to ascend rather late in life. We youngsters had a great respect for him, notwithstanding some of his peculiarities, and should never have dreamed of playing him the tricks ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... them to be angels, and very often the angel's highest ambition is to be considered a doll. Then your hope goes out and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... me, you worry me Demanding I turn out a rhyme; Insisting on reasons, you hurry me; You want my iambics on time. You say my ambition's diminishing; You ask why my poem's not done. The god it is keeps me from finishing ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... ambition? Here you are, with ten men's brains, and you sit—I don't know how you sit—in sackcloth, clearly, but whether for heaven or for Claudia I don't know. You think it odd to hear me preach ambition? I'm a lazy devil; ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Mariana—justifying the killing of excommunicated kings No man pretended to think of the State Practised successfully the talent of silence Queen is entirely in the hands of Spain and the priests Religion was made the strumpet of Political Ambition Smooth words, in the plentiful lack of any substantial Stroke of a broken table knife sharpened on a carriage wheel The assassin, tortured and torn by four horses They have killed him, 'e ammazato,' cried Concini Things he could tell which are too odious and dreadful Uncouple ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... comment in the West. One writer exclaims, "History does not record another instance where changes of such magnitude ever occurred within so short a time, and it is astonishing that it only required eleven words to destroy the ambition and power of a proud nobility that had with imperious will directed the destiny of Japan for more ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... defense of the fort, and who attended the unfortunate count on his death-bed till he expired, three days after the battle, at the early age of thirty-seven. "I die," said he, in his last hour, "a victim of my ambition, and of the avarice of my sovereign." A fine commentary on the mercenary system of the German princes. The government of Hesse Cassel quite recently caused the remains of Count Donop to be removed from Red Bank, to be interred with distinguished ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... unfeeling manner. But she suffers at times from a desire to live up to a sort of honorary reputation for sprightly humour, conferred upon her by undiscriminating admirers in the days before she became engaged to me. As a matter of fact, her solicitude on my behalf was largely due to an ambition to see a little paragraph in the newspapers, announcing that "Mr Adrian Inglethwaite, M.P., Director of the Sub-Tropical and Arctic Department at the Foreign Office, has appointed Mr Blankley Dash to ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... outset. The weather was fine and the temperature high enough to allow us all to sleep with comfort in the open air; but there was the heavy dew of the tropical night to be considered, which I feared might be productive of fever and ague to people in our debilitated condition. My immediate ambition therefore extended no further than to find in a suitable spot some tree, of thick enough foliage and with widespreading branches near enough the ground to afford good protection from the dew, beneath which beds of dry fern, or something of that sort, might be arranged for ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... and after branding his consort with the most opprobrious name of woman, brought him back with considerable personal violence into the hall[75]. Mr. Turner, our able Anglo-Saxon historian, regards the transaction as a bold attempt of Dunstan to subdue the regal power to his ambition. He represents the nobility as evincing some displeasure at the king's early departure, and the anxiety of Odo to communicate the state of their minds to Edwy. That the persons he first addressed excused themselves from undertaking this errand: and the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... early days accustomed myself to get the mastery over ambition and love—the two passions that in every age have enslaved the greatest heroes—your correspondent may rest assured that I am not one of the trio mentioned ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Ocean when his roar is hushed, Or some great snake whose fangs are crushed: Or as in swift eclipse the Sun Dark with the doom he cannot shun: Or a poor bird with mangled wing— So, reft of sons and host, the king No longer, by ambition fired, The pride of war his breast inspired. He gave his empire to his son— Of all he had, the only one: And bade him rule as kings are taught Then straight a hermit-grove he sought. Far to Himalaya's side he fled, Which bards and Nagas visited, And, Mahadeva's(231) grace ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... word, we have left to the vanquished naught but the soil; all their other possessions are ours. We had at first thought it necessary, conscript fathers, to appoint a new governor of Germany; but we have put off this measure to the time when our ambition shall be more completely satisfied, which will be, as it seems to us, when it shall have pleased divine Providence to increase and multiply ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... gathered a good deal from books and lectures, but far more from the mines they guided him to discover in his own nature. In common with so many Scotch parents, his had cherished the most wretched as well as hopeless of all ambitions, seeing it presumes to work in a region into which no ambition can enter—I mean that of seeing their son a clergyman. In presbyter, curate, bishop, or cardinal, ambition can fare but as that of the creeping thing to build its nest in the topmost boughs of the cedar. Worse than that; my simile is a poor one; for the moment ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... but impersonal "backing" of Peter Rolls, Sr.'s, great shop, she had the Bakst inspiration and the tingling ambition to set up (in a very small way) as a ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... to wed a man on whom she looked with indifference, but wed him she must; it was written. A toy of ambition, she was neither more nor less. Ah, to be as her maids, not royal, but free. Of the three new faces one belonged to the man whom she was to wed; another was a tall, light-haired man whom she had seen from her carriage; the last ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... as disadvantages. It connected, he says, "the white stranger with the country and its people, gave him an interest in their manners and customs, and taught him thoroughly well their language." Like the rest, Burton had his Bubu. Still, he was no voluptuary. Towering ambition, enthusiasm, and passion for hard work trampled down all meaner instincts. Languages, not amours, were his aspiration, and his mind ran on grammar books rather than ghazels; though he confesses ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... eyeballs? Was this the face of a happy man, with whom everything had succeeded, who, having been born to wealth and of an excellent family, had married the woman he loved; who had known neither the wearing cares of ambition, the toil of money-getting, nor the stings of wounded self-love? It is true, he suffered from liver complaint; but why was it that, although I had hitherto been satisfied with this answer, it now appeared to me childish and even foolish? Why ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... on the side of justice. But when it is considered that the parties are liable to differ in their intellectual capacities, and that one, or the other, or both, are undoubtedly under the influence of such passions as rivalry, hatred, avarice, and ambition. passions that are nearly certain to pervert their judgments, and very likely to corrupt their motives, all probabilities founded upon a mere numerical majority, in one party, or the other, vanish at once; and the decision ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... geographical limitation. They feel that they have as much right in North America as we have, and they purpose over-running us and making our country Japanese territory. And it was your purpose to aid in the consummation of this monstrous ambition," he ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... in a phrase to Warren, "I have nothing so much at heart as the faithful discharge of my duty, and in such manner as will give satisfaction both to the Lords of the Admiralty and yourself. This shall ever be my utmost ambition, and no lucre of profit, or other views, shall induce me to act otherwise." Not prize-money; but honor, through service. And this in fact not only ruled his thought but in the moment of decision inspired his act. Curiously enough, however, he was here ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... that holds Inquisitive attention, while I read. Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break: What is it, but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns? Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge, That tempts ambition. On the summit, see, The seals of office glitter in his eyes; He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels. Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends, And with a dext'rous jerk, soon twists him And ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... be. Our country must go on, she must press forward to new opportunities, she must dwell in new places. It is through people like us that such growth comes about, we don't ourselves know why. A little ambition, a little hope, a great blind impulse, and we go forward. That ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... matter; yet, not content with a private explanation given by Mr. R—, he made a call through the press. Mr. R—responded in a proper and courteous manner, acknowledging the due respect to which Mr. C—'s private character was entitled; thus increasing the ambition of the board generally, who, with the expectation of Mr. R—making a like acknowledgment to them as a body, (not excepting their honorable head,) made a demand in joint-officio. This being duly signalized through the columns of the Courier and Mercury, Mr. R—met it ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Henry into her net. Many said that she had employed magic for this purpose; indeed they assumed that the early death of the Prince had been brought on partly by this means.[392] Her marriage with the king's favourite was, if this be true, only a secondary satisfaction of her ambition, but yet a satisfaction which she could not forego. Somerset had an intimate friend, whose advice and services at a former period had been very useful to him, but who opposed this marriage and fell out with him on account of it—his name was Overbury.[393] Lady Frances swore to effect his death. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... soon after I experienced a change for the better and finally I reached this Holy College on February 6th of this present year. I remained, however, for a long time exhausted, weak and without any ambition or appetite. ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... but what George Lenox had begun better than other men, with enough to live on comfortably in city or country, provided he did not think too much of the necessity for showing his wife that she had not lessened her consequence in marrying him. Nobody could accuse poor Mr. Lenox now-a-days of ambition, or blame him if, in those early days as now, that terrible woman had frankly regarded him as an utter nonentity save in his association with her own destiny. She was a handsome woman, with aquiline nose, a thin, firmly-set mouth, piercing eyes and a magnificent carriage. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... swallowed up in business and ambition. He kept in touch with modern thought. For example, he was, I know, greatly swayed by what he called "This Overman ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Obligations I have to some of the Great Men of your Nation, particularly to your Lordship, gives me an Ambition of making my Acknowledgements by all the Opportunities I can; and such humble Fruits as my Industry produces I lay at your Lordship's Feet. This is a true Story, of a Man Gallant enough to merit your Protection, and, had he always been so Fortunate, he had not made so Inglorious ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Colonel Peakman, who, having been in command of the rear-guard on the previous day up till nine o'clock at night, was now taking his turn at advance guard at one o'clock the next morning. As a Kimberley man, it had long been his ambition to lead the relieving force into Mafeking, and I think no one grudged him the honour. Amongst all, indeed, there was a certain amount of competition, and the four correspondents who survived to the end of the expedition became strangely silent about their ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Elsie. As a matter of fact, she had some little talent in that direction, but fortunately we were able to persuade her to give up the idea entirely." He sighed. "She was so tender-hearted and affectionate that she could have been induced to give up far more precious things than an ambition of ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... capacity, and endowed with the power of acting as he likes, whilst the local wirepullers look upon him as a convenient mask, behind which they may the more effectively carry on their own petty schemes of personal ambition. ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... where Plimsoll's veins had sprinkled and Grit had stained the floor. He found, too, a button of horn with a fragment of black and white check, torn from Molly's riding coat in the struggle. Sandy's anger crystallized into one ambition beyond the finding of Molly, and that was to kill Plimsoll, if possible with his hands. He pictured the struggle between the gambler and the girl, desperate on one side, brutal on the other and, whether ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... stopped some morning or other, along with the huntsman, to drink a glass of burnt whiskey out of an eggshell, to do him good and warm his heart, and drive the cold out of his stomach. The old people always told him he was a great likeness of Sir Patrick; which made him first have an ambition to take after him, as far as his fortune should allow. He left us when of an age to enter the college, and there completed his education and nineteenth year; for as he was not born to an estate, his friends thought it incumbent on them to give him the best education which could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... young staff officers, when they left the imperial court for the hermit's cell, judged, on the whole, prudently and well, and chose the better part when they fled from the world to escape the "dangers" of ambition, and the "greater danger still" of success. For they escaped, not merely from vice and worldliness, but, as the event proved, from imminent danger of death if they kept the loyalty which they had sworn to their emperor; or the worse evil of baseness if ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul, arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all consideration of self. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... to school. She wanted him to learn. She had the notion that he might become something better, something higher than she had been. But for him school had no charms; his school was the cool stalls in the big livery stable near at hand; the arena of his pursuits its sawdust floor; the height of his ambition, to be a horseman. Either here or in the racing stables at the Fair-grounds he spent his truant hours. It was a school that taught much, and Patsy was as apt a pupil as he was a constant attendant. He learned strange things about ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... on the whole, had been a creditable affair. Out of modest chances and middling talents he had built himself a fairly marked personality, known some exceptional people, done a number of interesting and a few rather difficult things, and found himself, at thirty-seven, possessed of an intellectual ambition sufficient to occupy the passage to a robust and energetic old age. As for the private and personal side of his life, it had come up to the current standards, and if it had dropped, now and then, below a more ideal measure, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... rightful place in this gaudy world, stripped of youth and reduced in fortune, is a task that may well seem impossible. To-morrow he takes the first step towards the achievement of the impossible. Experience is no bad substitute for youth, and ambition is made stronger by the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I do know, and you may not,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... ambition to be sought after in society you must not talk about the unattractiveness of old age to the elderly, about the joys of dancing and skating to the lame, or about the advantages of ancestry to the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... but Clinch could not always quiet the spirit within him, and he often felt degraded as he remembered with how much more firmness Jane supported the load of hope deferred than he did himself. The recent interview with Cuffe had aroused all that remained of ambition and self-respect, and he had left the ship that morning with a full and manly determination to reform, and to make one continued and persevering effort to obtain a commission, and with it Jane. Then followed capture and the moment of deep despair. But Raoul's generosity removed ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the doctor draws upon him much good-will from his audience; and it is ten to one but if any of them be troubled with an aching tooth, his ambition will prompt him to get it drawn by a person who has had so many princes, kings, and emperors ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... distinctions between sovereign and subject, parent and child, with all their corresponding rights and duties, is liable to constant change according to the growth of human ambitions and human aims. Admirably suited to persons whose actions are controlled by selfish ambition, the adoption of this system in Japan is naturally sought by a certain class of politicians. From a superficial point of view, the Occidental form of society is very attractive, inasmuch as, being the outcome of a free development ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... shrink from him. The pink rose-leaf tongue peeped from between the budding rows of teeth, and the innocent considering eyes questioned him only a moment before the smile came. To be the father of Mildred's children seemed the lofty end of all desire that was not mere worldly ambition. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... these plans came back to him with dust upon them. They were dry and crumbling like forsaken habitations. The son upon whom his complacent ambition had rested had turned his back upon the mansion of his father's hopes. The break might not be final; and in any event there would be much to live for; the fortunes of the family would be secure. But the zest of ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... without ambition, he had drifted part way through college, a weak parody on those wealthy young men who idle through the great universities, leaving unsavory records. His father had managed to pay his debts, then very selfishly died, and there was nobody to support the son and heir, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... deep. One living in the past, reading the newspapers, diaries and record-books of the early days of the Nineteenth Century, can hardly understand how an occupation which played so great a part in American life as seafaring could ever be permitted to decline. The dearest ambition of the American boy of our early national era was to command a clipper ship—but how many years it has been since that ambition entered into the mind of young America! In those days the people of all the young commonwealths ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... been spoken, no promise given. There is not even an understanding. It is merely an old custom that has caused this report. He seemed a pleasant fellow, she had dreams, so—I yielded. But do you suppose I would allow my great ambition to be thwarted by the whim of a girl—to be upset by a stranger's smile? Bah! At their age I loved a dozen. I could not survive without them." He snapped his fingers. "You see now the truth of what I told you when we first ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... true success in that: when you have gained millions, you may yet be poorer than when you had nothing; and it is that same reckless ambition which has brought many a bright and capable boy, not to great estate at last, but to miserable failure and disgrace; not to a palace, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... thou foolish Egyptian, what have I to do with resentment? Do I resent the wind when it chills me, or the night when it makes me stumble in the darkness? Shall I resent youth when it turns from age, and ambition when it turns from servitude? To tell me such a story as this is but to tell me that the ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... engineer. To his mind, indeed, the flying part of "Peter Pan" was the least fascinating; he preferred the underground home, and the fight with the Indians, and the mechanism of the crocodile. For a short time, in fact, his only ambition had been to be the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... lover count the slow hours with more feverish ardour; I slept only to dream that I was saying mass; I believed there could be nothing in the world more delightful than to be a priest; I would have refused to be a king or a poet in preference. My ambition could conceive of ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... camp, which lasted for nearly half a century. The primary cause of this was the mutual dislike and jealousy of France and Germany, each of which strove to have a larger and better equipped national defence than the other. There were also many other causes, as the ambition of the Russian Czar, supported by his country's vast though imperfectly developed resources and practically unlimited supply of men, one phase of which was the constant ferment in the Balkan Peninsula, and another Russia's ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... to have lost all ambition. No; I won't just say that. But you appear, Mr. Darrin, either to have lost some of your snap or ambition, or else you have ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... his priesthood, during which the Bishop had been particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought not to decline it if he were offered an appointment to higher duties. Then monastic ambition, the very thing he had found so repulsive in other monks, arose within him. He was assigned to a monastery near the metropolis. He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept the appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... the westward of them until they had gone much further on the path toward national manhood. But the navigation of the Mississippi and its tributaries was so rich a prize, that it stimulated alike considerations of individual self-interest and national ambition. From the day when the first flatboat made its way from the falls of the Ohio to New Orleans, it was the fixed determination of all people living by the great river, or using it as a highway for commerce, that from its headwaters ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... [1]Rules of Art are necessary to the Conduct of a Ship; for which reason, none but able and experienced Seamen are preferred to the Command of one. Rules are necessary even to make a good Coachman, as those Gentlemen who have the Ambition to excel this way very well know. In the same manner is Art required to drive the Chariot of Love well. Now it hath pleased Venus to place me in the Coach-Box: what a Captain is to a Ship, or the Driver to his ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... the railroad was finished and a spectacular celebration was held near Ogden, in Utah Territory. The finishing stroke was everywhere regarded as national, since not only had Congress given aid, but the union of the oceans was an object of national ambition. With the completion, the problem shifted from the exciting risks of construction and finance to the prosaic duties of paying the bills, and with the shift came a ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... money could open many doors of pleasure to one who, like him, was in vigorous health and untroubled by a conscience. Moreover, he was able to spend much time in his beloved Germany, and while there the great ambition of his life entered his heart. His elder brother, who was living inexclusive pride and narrow economy on the ancient but diminished ancestral estate, ever received him graciously. This brother had married, but had not ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... studio the parent inadvertently let fall the remark that the great painting was about ready for exhibition but that the artist did not have money to complete it. He also hinted that if Alfred were a boy of proper ambitions he might become attached to the exhibition of the picture, but no, "Alfred's ambition did not rise above ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... are individualities instead of individuals. They do not exhibit an agglomeration of many different but consistent traits rendered unified and single by a dominant and informing characteristic, such as ambition in Macbeth, senility in Lear, or irresoluteness in Hamlet. A great fictitious character must be at once generic and specific; it must give concrete expression to an abstract idea; it must be an individualized representation of the typical qualities ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... mismanaged property, divided the proceeds between himself and my father, and, after an affectionate adieu, set off for the West Indies. My father, less enterprising, remained where all his affections were fixed, and farmed a few acres from one of the new proprietors—void of ambition, content to glide down the stream of life unknowing and unknown by the busy world, all his cares concentrated on me, whom he intended for the church, and educated accordingly. For several years, and until misfortunes pressed so heavily upon him, he maintained ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... thrilled and rejoiced than frightened. Mameena had never been so ill to look upon, and I knew that dead or living I had nothing to fear from her who would have walked through hell fire for my sake, would have done anything, except perhaps sacrifice her ambition. No, even if this were her ghost I should have been glad to ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... learn the business, with a view to setting up a school of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... whether he was able to form a clear conception of what would take place after the trial was over and the property awarded to his son-in-law. It was perhaps enough for his ambition that his daughter should be Princess Saracinesca, and he did not doubt his power to control some part of the fortune. San Giacinto, who was wholly innocent in the matter, would, he thought, be deeply grateful for having been told of his position, and ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... replied the toll-woman. "Father moved in here when about everything else failed him, and he'd lost ambition, and laws! now I am used to it. I might gone back to Ohio, but when you fit me into a place I never want to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... dead, Who for freedom fought and bled, With her banner o'er you spread, On to victory. Not for stern ambition's prize, Do our hopes and wishes rise; Lo, our leader from the skies, Bids ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... between; keen, strong, undefeated and suggestive. It was not till now that she admitted to her own soul that he had dominated her imagination for months past. His achievements, his peculiar independence, his swift versatility had captured her crescent ambition, the ambition which he himself had unwittingly stimulated. She did not question whether this was love, she only knew that in this season, when his work seemed to be tottering over his head, she was ready to come to him and help rebuild it into ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan |
