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Ambitious   Listen
adjective
Ambitious  adj.  
1.
Possessing, or controlled by, ambition; greatly or inordinately desirous of power, honor, office, superiority, or distinction. "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious, And Brutus is an honorable man."
2.
Strongly desirous; followed by of or the infinitive; as, ambitious to be or to do something. "I was not ambitious of seeing this ceremony." "Studious of song, and yet ambitious not to sing in vain."
3.
Springing from, characterized by, or indicating, ambition; showy; aspiring; as, an ambitious style. "A giant statue... Pushed by a wild and artless race, From off wide, ambitious base."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books



... pronunciation which is an interpretation of the written form of the words in accordance with the general rules relating to the 'powers' of the letters. This practice is especially common among imperfectly educated people who are ambitious of speaking correctly, and have unfortunately no better standard of 'correctness' than that of conformity with the spelling. I remember hearing a highly-intelligent working-class orator repeatedly pronounce the word suggest as 'sug jest'. Such vagaries as this are not likely ever to ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 3 (1920) - A Few Practical Suggestions • Society for Pure English

... on deck and saw Newman. I found that he had written to the captain, who had reserved a berth for him, but it was still before the mast. He had the promise, he told me, of a mate's berth should a vacancy occur; but he observed, "I am not ambitious. With what I have I am content." He asked no questions as to what I had been doing. It was not his way. He was certainly free from vulgar curiosity; neither did he volunteer to give me any account of himself. I told him one day what I had done with ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... under this pseudonym, Mr. Goodrich has produced several works of a more ambitious character, which have been eminently popular. Among them is a series entitled "The Cabinet Library," embracing histories, biographies, and essays in science; "Universal Geography," in an octavo volume of one thousand pages; and a "History of all Nations," in two large ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... additional powers which, even the moderate and more rational adversaries of the proposed Constitution admit, ought to reside in the United States. If that plan should not be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union should be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those men who may indulge magnificent schemes of personal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the probability would be, that we should run into the project of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, as they are now constituted; and either the machine, from the intrinsic feebleness ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... brothers. Above all others put no faith in Prince Henry; he hates you with a perfect hatred for the sake of Augustus William, who, he says, died of your contempt and cruelty. Trust him in nothing; he is ambitious, he envies you your throne; he hates me also, and calls me always 'La fee malfaisant.' He shall be justified in this! I will be for him La fee malfaisant. I will revenge myself for this hatred. Without my help, however, he will soon be sufficiently ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... Saldannas watering-place, on account of his having lost several of his men there in endeavouring to land. At this time Ruy Lorenzo was parted from him in a storm which drove him to Mozambique, whence he held on his course for Quiloa, where he took some small prizes. Being ambitious to distinguish himself, he went to the island of Zanzibar, twenty leagues short of Mombasa, where he took twenty small vessels. After this he appeared before the town of Mombasa, the king of which place sent out a number of armed almadias ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... ancient seams of the Humboldt's decks responded to the glowing sun until pacing the deck was impossible, but sea-sickness was no less so. We lazily steamed into the beautiful harbor, up past Eureka, her streets still occupied by stumps, and on to the ambitious pier stretching nearly two miles from Uniontown ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... as distinct a being from Richard III as it is possible to imagine, though these two characters in common hands, and indeed in the hands of any other poet, would have been a repetition of the same general idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... lived. She thought of Annie's cosy home which three Visions now made radiant, of John Coulson's love and devotion, and her heart answered the accusation and declared it false. She wondered if other girls were as silently ambitious as she, and why this best of all ambitions must be always locked away in secret, while lesser ones might be proudly ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... teares Lest the full clouds, ambitious that their drops Should mix with yours, unteeme their big wombd laps And rayse a suddeine deluge. Gratious madam, The oftner you reherse her losse the more You intimate the gaine I have acquird By your ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... we give on another page): it represents a winged figure of Time helping a naked woman out of what appears to be a cave, with the motto, "Tempore patet occulata veritas"; this Mark follows the introductory matter in the above-named work. Making a leap of over half a century, we come across another ambitious Mark, which in the present instance served the additional purpose of a frontispiece; it was employed by John Allen of the Rising Sun, St. Paul's Churchyard, and is dated 1656; it is rather a fine device of the sun rising behind the hills, with a cathedral ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... honest man, the not putting faith in what is said concerning magic, and to laugh at it. His friend, believing himself very virtuous because he was not avaricious—"That is not sufficient," said he: "are you exempt from every other vice and every other fault; not ambitious, not passionate, fearless of death? Do you laugh at all that is told of dreams, magical operations, miracles, sorcerers, ghosts, and Thessalian wonders?"[675]—that is to say, in one word, of all kinds of magic. What is the aim of Lucian, in his ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... what happened," Mr. Pitkin explained. "All of the bright ambitious children came back and the loafers stayed away. From that picked crowd nothing but good work could be expected. There was no attendance officer on duty, but the children were regular. Order was so good that on hot days we put up the sashes between rooms, and on the second floor, where four class-rooms ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... lines, a realized dream of hideousness—but for the splendid sky, always changing and doing all that was possible in the gleams and shadows and the glowing colors of morning and evening to soften the ambitious work of man; but for the wide horizon, with patches of green shores and verdant flats washed by the kindly tide; but for the Highlands and Staten Island, the gateway to the ocean; but for the great river and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... may be put in evidence. Probably this work lost something in incisiveness and brilliancy by being postponed till the writer's old age. But whatever this loss, it is impossible for any biography to be less pretentious in style, or less ambitious in proclamation. The only pretension of matter is in the early chapters, in which a more than doubtful genealogy is elaborated, and in which it is thought necessary to Washington's dignity to give a fictitious importance to his family and his childhood, and to accept the southern estimate of the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... which she published at the commencement of her literary career, as well as those which appeared posthumously, are favourable specimens of that species of composition. As a poet, she attained to no eminence. "The Highlanders," her longest and most ambitious poetical effort, exhibits some glowing descriptions of mountain scenery, and the stern though simple manners of the Gael. Of a few songs which proceed from her pen, that commencing, "Oh, where, tell me where?" written on the occasion of the Marquis of Huntly's departure for Holland ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... so—if, after all, he had not died, And suddenly that door should know his hand, And with that voice as kind as yours he said: "Come, Margaret, forth into the sun again, Back to the life we fashioned with our hands Out of old sins and follies, fragments scorned Of more ambitious builders, yet by Love, The patient architect, so shaped and fitted That not a crevice let the winter in—" Think you my bones would not arise and walk, This bruised body (as once the bruised soul) Turn from the wonders ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... food and quarter, the enemy relaxed not their energy. It must not be supposed that our guns were idle all this time. Long Cecil plied pluckily to hit back, and succeeded in frustrating the ambitious efforts of the Boers to draw their guns still nearer. They were rather too close as things were, however, and with the aid of the Maxims we successfully besought the enemy to fling away ambition. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... arrested in the midst of his task by the stronger hand of death; and the unfinished fabric stands a lasting monument both of the power and weakness of man—of his vast desires, his sanguine hopes, his ambitious purposes—and of the unlooked-for conclusion, where all these desires, and hopes, and purposes are so often arrested. There is also at Blois another ancient chateau, to which some historic interest is attached as being the scene of the massacre ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... shaped like mushrooms, standing straight up on thick brown stems before the crowded hovels. In each vase reposed sleeping babies, brooding hens, dogs, rabbits, or any other live stock, mixed with such rubbish as the family possessed: and the most ambitious mushrooms ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... shackled the free exercise of its prerogatives. The slender portion of independence left him by the growing power of the Estates, was still farther lessened by the encroachments of his relations. Sickly and childless he saw the attention of the world turned to an ambitious heir who was impatiently anticipating his fate; and who, by his interference with the closing administration, was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the case of the narratives that made up the first volume, I set out again with the same ambitious aim of adhering scrupulously in every instance to actual, recorded facts; and once again I find it desirable at the outset to reveal how far the achievement may have fallen short of the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... and the wind blew, and steadily the vessel sailed on; till higher grounds began to rise on either side of her, and hills stood back of hills, ambitious of each other's standing, and threw their deep shadows all along the margin of the river. As the sloop entered between these narrowing and lifting walls of the river channel, the draught of air became gentler, often hindered by ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... carpenter's 'prentice would have owned to such clumsy joinery; but Arthur was flushed with success, because the door could positively shut and the window could open. He even projected tables and chairs in his ambitious imagination, en suite with the bedstead of ironwood poles and platted bass-work bark, which he had already improvised; and which couch of honour would have been awarded by common consent to Mr. Holt, had ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... think of Jane Wilson; and I believe I know how far you are mistaken in your opinion: you think she is singularly charming, elegant, sensible, and refined: you are not aware that she is selfish, cold-hearted, ambitious, artful, shallow-minded—' ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... oak in the prime of life, and the oak that totters in desolate and crabbed old age. The oak that enjoys in middle age the good things of life, with well-fed and rounded symmetry; and the oak that suggests decrepitude, with rough exterior, and a life-experience of hardship; the sturdy oak, the ambitious oak, the self-contained oak, and so on, through every phase of character. No other tree is so human or so expressive, and no other tree bespeaks such fortitude and endurance. To say that a well-grown oak typifies the reserve ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... wise policy of the Admiral that the nation owes the success of these negociations. It is the opinion of Swedish and Russian diplomatists that had Sir James not been employed, the Northern Coalition, which was so fatal to the ambitious views of Buonaparte, never would have taken place; and for such a service no reward which it was in the power of Government to bestow on him would have been too great. There can be no doubt, had the lamented Perceval not met with an untimely ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... things I like. I should see plenty of court life and high society, for he will soon be transferred from this legation, and if I take him I shall go to some foreign capital. He is very sharp and ambitious, and I have no doubt that some day he will be looked upon as a distinguished foreigner. Now, as it is the ambition of many American girls to marry distinguished foreigners, this alliance is certainly ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... he cried, as the man-servant was closing the hall door. He had just brought the King on the scene for the benefit of an ambitious little official, and the word was still on his lips. He fretted and chafed while the door was unbarred; then, swift as a thunderbolt, dashed into the ante-chamber, ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... unraveled and smoothed themselves out. It was better so—better to live his own life than the one into which he was being ground by the inexorable facts of his environment. He was a young man and ambitious, but his hopes were not selfish. At bottom he was an idealist, though a practical one. He had had to shut his eyes to many things which he deplored, had been driven to compromises which he despised. Essentially clean-handed, ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... bounty you have been pleased to show towards our Society gave me hopes you would not be unwilling to countenance the studies of one of its members. These considerations determined me to lay this treatise at your lordship's feet, and the rather because I was ambitious to have it known that I am with the truest and most profound respect, on account of that learning and virtue which the world so justly admires in your lordship, MY LORD, Your lordship's most humble and ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... before Madame de Frontignac started for Philadelphia, whither her husband had been summoned as an agent in some of the ambitious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... of this beautiful passage is worthy our careful study and prayerful obedience. Are we ambitious to govern: be it our honour to rule our own spirits and tongues. Are we for war? let it be levied upon our unruly passions. This is laudable ambition. This is honourable war, producing the peace and happiness of man. This is real glory to God and man, the very opposite to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of full President—which had necessitated not one but three ballots being taken, making most people declare that had there been no bribery or intimidation he would have probably been elected to the supreme office in the land, and ousted the ambitious usurper. In such circumstances his complete elimination was deemed an elementary necessity. To secure that end Yuan Shih-kai suddenly dispatched to Wuchang—where the Vice-President had resided ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... he had failed to win the woman he loved. Love, he reminded himself bitterly, was not the main business of life. This mood of renunciation gave him an almost impersonal appreciation of his successful rival; but the tribute left him heartsick. Like all personally ambitious men who have failed of popular applause, the success of another filled him with momentary self-depreciation. To be sure, this popular triumph of Emmet was fleeting and local, while he himself meant yet to win a permanent, though restricted, fame. Of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Clair, was now completed. She had kept the writing of it a profound secret, and one morning the young author, full of ambitious dreams, borrowed the cook's market-bonnet and cloak and sallied out to seek her fortune. Before going far she saw over a shop-door "T. Smith, Printer and Bookseller," and ventured in. It was some minutes before T. Smith made his appearance, and when he did ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... springs of hope and desire. She began deliberately and with purpose to call back memories of the past: the house in which he had lived, the gardens and orchards in which he once had taken pride, his ambitious projects ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... and by day gentle of manner. Her health was not perfect. She knew this, and so did every one she met. While not an invalid, she in her imagination trembled on the edge of invalidism, and upon this subject she was almost loquacious. She was domestic in her tastes, and ambitious and devoted to her ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... published works, however, he left numerous manuscripts, which he had noted as 'Things I would write out faire and reform if I had leisure,' comprising poems, mathematical papers, religious meditations, and biographies. The most ambitious of his poems is Thyrsander, a Tragy-Comedy, which is probably one of those referred to by Pepys in his Diary for 5th Novr. 1665, when, visiting Evelyn at Sayes Court, he says that 'He read me part of a play or two of his making, very good, but not as he conceits ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... Where the coach exercises too limited authority, or when he is too "easy," the team's record is sure to suffer in consequence. Many a High School eleven comes out a tail-ender just because the coach is not strict enough, or cannot be. Many a team composed of naturally husky and ambitious boys fails on account of a light-weight coach. On the other hand, the best coach in the country can't make a winning eleven out of fellows who won't ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... with great solemnity conducted them across the hall to Jolter, who also heard them in silence and conducted them into the adjoining room to Bobby. Here Jolter stood back and eyed young Mr. Burnit with great interest as his two experienced veterans and his ambitious youngster poured forth their several tales of woe. Bobby, as it became him to be, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... Phoebe, more humane, graciously allows herself to be seen in her modest grace; she is gentle to the eye, not ambitious, and yet she sometimes eclipses her brother the radiant Apollo, without ever being eclipsed by him. The Mahommedans understood what gratitude they owed to this faithful friend of the earth, and they ruled their months at 29-1/2 days ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... were somewhat sensuous. A passing stranger would be immediately attracted by him. Blue eyes, brown hair, and well-formed features, together with a sunny and kind-hearted disposition, had made him a popular man. While very ambitious, he also possessed a happy disposition which made him the best of companions. He was now on his way to visit a distant relative on his father's side, and looked forward with exceeding interest to spending the last weeks of his ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... success coming to the notice of the avaricious and ambitious Queen Elizabeth, she, five years later (1567), became the open protector of a new expedition and sharer in the nefarious traffic, thus becoming a promoter, abettor, and participant ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... have fifty children, which, he added, "all Sultans ought to have;" but, for money he did not care, he wished all his children were poor but pious marabouts. His preaching is quite contrary to his practice. A more money-getting ambitious fellow I have not found in The Desert. The report which I heard of the Governor of Ghat being changed whilst at Ghadames, was a sham abdication on his part. From domestic matters he proceeded to talk of politics. His Excellency is always anxious to give ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... the ministers of Y mentioned in this stanza. Hwang-f appears to have been the leading minister of the government at the time when the ode was written, and, as appears from the next two stanzas, was very crafty, oppressive, and selfishly ambitious. The mention of 'the chief Cook' among the high ministers appears strange; but we shall find that functionary mentioned in another ode; and from history it appears that 'the Cook,' at the royal and feudal courts, sometimes ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... physical deterioration that has come to the city dweller. God grant that modern civilization has had teaching enough and learned its lesson well enough. God grant further that we may give over slaughtering our most ambitious and vigorous young men in battle to settle questions which battle can never settle. God grant that we have come to a turning of the ways where the life of men, women and children, no matter how humble their station, shall stand higher in value than the profits ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... of both Hal and Noll had found themselves in somewhat better circumstances. Hal and Noll, being ambitious, had both felt dissatisfied, of late, with their surroundings and prospects, and both had received parental permission to better themselves if they could. So our two young friends, after many talks, and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... to start with caviare? I am," confided Lady Drakmanton, and the Smithly-Dubbs started with caviare. The subsequent dishes were chosen in the same ambitious spirit, and by the time they had arrived at the wild duck course it was beginning to be a ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... originator of two rebellions approached Pasmore, the ragged, wild-eyed, clamorous crowd made way for him. It was ludicrous to note the air of superiority and braggadocio that this inordinately vain and ambitious man adopted. The prisoner was standing surrounded by his now largely augmented guard, who, forgetful of one another's contiguity, had their many wonderfully and fearfully made blunderbusses levelled at him, ready to blow him into little pieces at a moment's notice if ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... sits on the floor with Annie. They are playing with building blocks, piling up and tearing down various ambitious structures. Rhoda enters from outside, with hat and cloak, carrying a ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody

... satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... power and money piling up higher and higher every day and the Church's dominion spreading daily wider and farther, a time could come when the envious and ambitious could start the idea that it would be wise and well to put a watch upon these assets —a watch equipped with properly large authority. By custom, a Board of Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has foreseen that probability—for she is a woman with a long, long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... at Rambagh, for I had no measured hours. I was ambitious too; eager to master my profession, and in constant dread of exciting derision ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... as to think that nobody can like what they do not; also so fatuous as to consider that no one ought to like what they do not; but to jump from this to alleging that the professed admirers of ambitious works are humbugs is outrageous. The butcher boy enjoys Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: why should he disbelieve my statement that others get pleasure from a performance of a Hedda Gabler, which ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... advise you to be more contented,' said a Honeysuckle, as she looked down upon the ambitious little Flower from her own elevated position; 'let me tell you it is not always those who are highest up in the world are the happiest; they feel the cold winds quite as keenly, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... successfully with Urien of Strathclyde. But in 592, says Baeda, who lived himself but three-quarters of a century later than the event he describes, "there reigned over the kingdom of the Northumbrians a most brave and ambitious king, AEthelfrith, who, more than all other nobles of the English, wasted the race of the Britons; for no one of our kings, no one of our chieftains, has rendered more of their lands either tributary to or an integral part of the English territories, whether by subjugating or expatriating ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... and her sisters enjoyed Evelina's tribulations; then Fanny grew ambitious, and encouraged by her brother, thought of publication. When she tremblingly asked her father's consent, he carelessly countenanced the venture and gave it no second thought. After much negotiation, a publisher offered twenty pounds for the manuscript, and in 1778 the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... piece of his own work that could hold its own with Chenier's verse; and with a tolerably fatuous glance at Mme. de Bargeton, he announced "TO HER!" He struck an attitude proudly for the delivery of the ambitious piece, for his author's self-love felt safe and at ease behind Mme. de Bargeton's petticoat. And at the selfsame moment Mme. de Bargeton betrayed her own secret to the women's curious eyes. Although she had always looked down upon this audience from her own loftier intellectual ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... air of complacency and importance. He felt little doubt that his own essay on the "Military Genius of Napoleon" would win the prize. He did not so much care for this, except for the credit it would give him. But his father, who was ambitious for him, had promised him twenty-five dollars if he succeeded, and he had already appropriated this sum in imagination. He had determined to invest it in a handsome boat which he had seen for sale in Boston on his last ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Commander-in-Chief and his staff were busy with preparations for a battle, in conjunction with the French, which had ambitious objects. These have never been stated because they were not gained (and it was the habit of our High Command to conceal its objectives and minimize their importance if their hopes were unfulfilled), but beyond doubt the purpose of the battle was to gain possession of Lens ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... of Wrath, who was eating Spickgans, a delicacy much sought after in these parts. "Do, my dear Elizabeth," wrote my friend, "take some notice of the poor thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and has nowhere literally to go for Christmas. She is very ambitious and hardworking—" ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... field was performed in so systematic a manner, and by so thorough and wisely divisioned labor, that there were none of the jealousies and enjoyings which exist among those who wish to hoard, and ambitious to excel in style and equipage. And before the fire-water came among them, dissentions of any kind were almost unknown. This has been the fruitful source of all their woes. It was not till Mary became a mother that she gave ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... cautiously. "Il ne faut pas entrer: Monsieur ne permet personne de voir le chateau." We made involuntarily two steps forward; when lo! the end of a modern house, with a pea-green door and sash windows, and a shrubbery of lilacs interspersed with Lombardy poplars, blasted our sight. No longer ambitious of pursuing the lord of St. Vallier in flank, we hoped at least that a front view of his castle from the road to Avignon might afford some remains of feudal splendour. Off we set accordingly, and emerging from the dirty town ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... Importance that the Fidelity of one or the Treachery of another, in the service of the publick, should be made known. A Man of inflexible Republican Virtue cannot but incur both the Dread & the Hatred of those who are—ambitious—desirous of making Fortunes—artful and enterprizing—especially if much of the publick Money has passd, unaccounted for, through their Hands. Mr Dean would have the World believe that Dr Lee ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... by seeing generous things performed before our eyes?" Eugenio ended his discourse, by recommending the apt use of a theatre, as the most agreeable and easy method of making a polite and moral gentry, which would end in rendering the rest of the people regular in their behaviour, and ambitious of ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... they had sent no help to Guglielmo dei Pazzi, had demanded aid from Chaumont dumbest, governor of the Milanese, an behalf of Louis XII, not only explaining the danger they themselves were in but also Caesar's ambitious projects, namely that after first overcoming the small principalities and then the states of the second order, he had now, it seemed, reached such a height of pride that he would attack the King of France ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the trunks of the trees cut down to make way for it. They were fastened with stakes, and against rain and snow helped to hold it in place. The soil, as the path showed, was of a pink stone. It cuts easily, and is the stone from which cathedrals have been built. That suggests that to an ambitious young sapling it offers little nutriment, but the pines, at least, seem to thrive on it. For centuries they have thrived on it. They towered over us to the height of eight stories. The ground beneath was hidden by the most exquisite ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... the formation of the Union was answered by the formation of a Catholic League among the states about it under Maximilian, the Duke of Bavaria. Both were ostensibly for defensive purposes: but the peace of Europe was at once shaken. Ambitious schemes woke up in every quarter. Spain saw the chance of securing a road along western Germany which would enable her to bring her whole force to bear on the rebels in the Low Countries. France on the other hand had recovered from the exhaustion of her own religious wars, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... overview: In January 1994, Senegal undertook a bold and ambitious economic reform program with the support of the international donor community. This reform began with a 50% devaluation of Senegal's currency, the CFA franc, which was linked at a fixed rate to the French franc. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... able to snatch him from his parents," said Biron. "But those parents certainly hate me, and indeed very naturally, as they, it seems, were, next to me, designated as the guardians of their son Ivan. The Duchess Anna Leopoldowna of Brunswick is ambitious." ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... Shop, or an exchange store, for every phase of desire that can enter into an unsatisfied heart, or a soul unduly ambitious. This one, into which Mr. World escorted Miss Church-Member, is intended for those who become dissatisfied with the dress of righteousness, or for any who wish a change in any part of their apparel. It proved intensely interesting to Miss Church-Member, with her new-found ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... of existence is not innate vanity but casual sin; what has misled us is not the will in general but only the false and ignorant direction of a will not recognising its only possible satisfaction. What religion in this case opposes to the world is a special law, a special hope, a life intense, ambitious, and aggressive, but excluding much which to an ingenuous will might seem excellent and tempting. Worldliness, in a word, is ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... went on talking volubly. She was evidently both fond and proud of her master. Suddenly she waved her lean arm towards a large, ambitious painting showing a typical family group of French bourgeois sitting in ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... she began, as the carryall, mounting the hill, turned into Monument Avenue, where numbers of new houses had been built of late years, Queen Anne cottages in brick and stone, timber, and concrete, with here and there a more ambitious "villa" of pink granite, all surrounded with lawns and rosaries and vine-hung verandas and tinkling fountains. "In the first place I wish to learn where all these people and houses come from. I was told that you lived in a lodge ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... the high noon of night: October 15, 1812. Hark to the tread of the Twelve Hours as they pass on the palace clock, and join their comrades that have been! The vast corridors are still; in the shadows lurk two burly minions of ambitious crime, Burkard and Sauerbeck. Is that a white moving shadow which approaches through the gloom? There arises a shriek, a heavy body falls, 'tis a lacquey who has seen and recognised The White Lady of the Grand Ducal House, that walks before the deaths of Princes. Burkard and Sauerbeck spurn ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... observes, "His housekeeping is seen much in the different families of dogs and serving-men attendant on their kennels; and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly ambitious to seem delighted with the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr. Hastings, remarks, "He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and had hawks of all kinds both long and short winged. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... and filled him with ambitious anticipations. He went at once to tell the guides to follow us to Zermatt and bring all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... it came about that on the first Monday in the following November Jack Dudley and Fred Greenwood were in their respective seats at school, as eager and ambitious to press their studies as they had been to visit Bowman's ranch, in Southwestern Wyoming, in which ranch, by the way, they advised Mr. Dudley to retain ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... addition to her democratic pride—which I cannot blame her for—which makes her prefer the company of her equals to that of her superiors, she finds herself a perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate; and this is a sort of dignified desolation which poor Bessy is not at all ambitious of. Vanity gets over all these difficulties; but pride ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... ambitious. He gave all his money to his mother. When he earned fourteen shillings a week, she gave him back two for himself, and, as he never drank, he felt himself rich. He went about with the bourgeois of Bestwood. The townlet contained nothing higher than the clergyman. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... economy depends heavily on agriculture, featuring fruits, vegetables, wine, and tobacco. Moldova must import almost all of its energy supplies from Russia. Energy shortages contributed to sharp production declines after the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991. As part of an ambitious reform effort after independence, Moldova introduced a convertible currency, freed prices, stopped issuing preferential credits to state enterprises, backed steady land privatization, removed export controls, and freed interest rates. The government ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... wailed aloud in his misery and woe, his yelps of distress quite filling the empyrean. But only for the space of a few seconds. Recovering his customary aplomb he made a flying leap for the top of the gate, his yelps now succeeded by ambitious growls—and in self-defense The Laird was forced to spray him again as he clung momentarily on top of the palings. With a sob Jerry dropped back and buried his nose in the dust, while The Laird beat a hurried retreat into the darkness, for he had lost all confidence in ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... Hanging Rock denounced them as snobs, for Hanging Rock was virtuously eloquent on the subject of snobbishness—we human creatures being never so effective as when assailing in others the vice or weakness we know from lifelong, intimate, internal association with it. But secretly the successfully ambitious spurners of that suburban society were approved, were envied. And Hanging Rock was most gracious to them whenever it ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... of Alexius I. was, however, not alone in her interest in the Chora. Her devotion to the monastery was shared also by her grandson the sebastocrator Isaac. Tall, handsome, brave, but ambitious and wayward, Isaac was gifted with the artistic temperament, as his splendid manuscript of the first eight books of the Old Testament, embellished with miniatures by his own hand, makes clear.[525] If the inscription on the mosaic representing the Deesis found in ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... churches, to throw images of Christ into the road, and, showing no mercy to old men and women and children, to destroy all and spare none. And why? Ostensibly because one quite commonplace Austrian gentleman had been foully murdered, but really because a vain and ambitious and rapidly increasing nation, living on an arid and insufficient soil, had come to consider themselves the master-spirits of humanity, and therefore entitled to possess the earth, or at least give law to all ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... in these disastrous wars; no burning question was settled by the victory of either side; no great principle or national interest was involved. It was little more in reality than the struggle for supremacy and place amongst the overbearing and ambitious nobles; hence the ease and readiness with which they changed sides on every imaginable pretext, and the hopeless character of the struggle, which ruined and exhausted the country without vindicating one ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... thought the old woman was ambitious," Sir Shawn went on, dreamily. "She used to watch Bridyeen while all those fellows were hanging about her and paying her compliments. I have sometimes thought she meant Bridyeen to marry a gentleman. Several were infatuated ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... itself to one on business matters. I ought to have said that my father was an ambitious man and one of wide plans. I think that even then he foresaw the day when the half-patriarchial life of our State would pass away before one of wider horizons of commercial sort. He was anxious to hand down his family fortune much ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... apparently amiable and good-natured, but certainly neither courtier nor orator; a man of undeniable bravery, capable of supporting almost incredible hardships, humane, and who has always proved himself a sincere lover of what he considered liberty, without ever having been actuated by ambitious or interested motives. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... born in Kaura, a child to whom the name Lij Kassi was given—a lad whose uncle was then governor of that part of Abyssinia. The boy grew to be wilful, self-reliant, and very ambitious; it is even said that he set himself out to be the elect of God, who should raise his country to a glory equal to that of Ethiopia of old. There was a prophecy indeed, "And it shall come to pass that a king shall arise in Ethiopia, of Solomon's lineage, who shall be the greatest on earth, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... be Superintendent before long; and it only required one other big case, such as this, to insure Harborne's succession to an Inspectorship. From thence to the office vacated by Sheffield was an easy step for a competent and ambitious man. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... brevity was the style of primitive philosophy. Now there was a saying of Pittacus which was privately circulated and received the approbation of the wise, 'Hard is it to be good.' And Simonides, who was ambitious of the fame of wisdom, was aware that if he could overthrow this saying, then, as if he had won a victory over some famous athlete, he would carry off the palm among his contemporaries. And if I am not mistaken, he composed the entire poem with the secret intention ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... me sadly back to my own purpose, which is, despite many wistful longings of a more ambitious nature, to write a plain tale of the adventures of two members—prospective up to this point—of the Escadrille Lafayette. To go back to some of those earlier ones, when we were making our first cross-country flights, I remember ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... Muster a fitting crew, and place on board The sacred hecatomb; then last embark The fair Chryseis; and in chief command Let some one of our councillors be plac'd, Ajax, Ulysses, or Idomeneus, Or thou, the most ambitious of them all, That so our rites may ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... hated; and of all Edomites not one was more bitterly detested than was Herod the king. He was tyrannical and merciless, sparing neither foe nor friend who came under suspicion of being a possible hindrance to his ambitious designs. He had his wife and several of his sons, as well as others of his blood kindred, cruelly murdered; and he put to death nearly all of the great national council, the Sanhedrin. His reign was one of revolting cruelty and unbridled oppression. Only when ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... supposed, with some qualification. But when the same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of proposition is any less true than the other, or that Icarus ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Madame Bayard, having pinned up her skirts, went out with the children and the nurse to pick flowers in a neighboring field, the druggist, who was less ambitious, treated the saloon-keeping cousin to a glass of vermouth, seated at the billiard-table, which was covered with dead flies. They breakfasted under a vineless arbor, which the hot noonday sun riddled with its ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee

... houses—small and very proper-looking. Each house consisted of two stories, with a hall door in the middle and a sitting room on each side. There were three windows overhead, and one or two attics in the roof. The houses were very compact; they were new, and were called by ambitious names. For instance, the house where the Weldons lived went by the ambitious name of Sans Souci. All through the walk Susy chatted for the benefit of her companion. She told Kathleen so much about her life that she was interested in spite of herself! and by the time they arrived ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... But he was ambitious too; he was writing a great book full of holy learning; and he had of late somewhat withdrawn himself from the life of the College; he sate longer at his studies and he was seen less often in other Colleges. Ten years he ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... government office—he was not yet thirty years of age—and treated him almost as a son, the young man reciprocating the regard with a really filial devotion. He was ambitious for advancement, and discontented with his slow promotion. In 1797, in company with other choice spirits, he began the publication of The Anti-Jacobin, a weekly periodical which for nearly a year held up to merciless ridicule that section ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... to confess, but a man's heart is like an ocean billow; for, from that very moment Porthos ceased to look at Madame Truchen in that touching manner which had so softened her heart. Planchet encouraged these ambitious leanings as best as he could. He talked over, or rather gave exaggerated accounts of all the splendors of the last reign, its battles, sieges, and grand court ceremonies. He spoke of the luxurious display which the English made; the prizes the three brave companions ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... present public safety, when a Devorant is ambitious, he builds houses, lays by his money, and leaves the Order. There is many a curious thing to tell about the "Compagnons du Devoir" [Companions of the Duty], the rivals of the Devorants, and about the different sects ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... was only one of the very many men who have been extremely anxious that I should marry somebody else. Two years later Alfred died of cerebral tumescence—a disease to which the ambitious are peculiarly liable. That cat, Millie Wyandotte, happened to say to Birsch that if I had married his son I should now have ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... question is to eliminate all that is foreign to the inquiry, and to concentrate his attention upon the subject to be dealt with. Here I may remark that I make no attempt in this book to deal with Society as a whole. I leave to others the formulation of ambitious programmes for the reconstruction of our entire social system; not because I may not desire its reconstruction, but because the elaboration of any plans which are more or less visionary and incapable of realisation for many years would stand in the way of the consideration of this Scheme for ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth



Words linked to "Ambitious" :   challenging, overambitious, pushy, driven, unambitious, aspiring, aspirant, difficult, wishful



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