"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respectable origin, and he inherited his military tastes from his father, who became a general in the English army. He had few advantages of education in his youth, though in later life he became studious, and had much love for mathematics. A soldier's life was his ambition, and fame was his dominating impulse. His indomitable spirit governed his physical weakness. The natural kindness of his nature rose superior to the irritability sometimes caused by his ill-health, and made ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... hit the rail a sudden blow, viciously, as though she could be made to feel pain. And yet he could not do without er; he needed her; he must hang on to her tooth and nail to keep his head above water till the expected flood of fortune came sweeping up and landed him safely on the high shore of his ambition. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... resolve; yet it was there, in my heart and upon my lips. I had come upon the field late, come in the wrong uniform, but I was sufficiently in earnest now. The girl liked me, served me, and she interested me as no other ever had. Her very moods, piquant, reserved, aroused my ambition, stimulated my purpose, and Le Gaire—the very thought of him was a thorn in the flesh. I have wondered since if I really loved her then; I do not know, but I dreamed of her, idealized her, my heart throbbing at every unusual sound without, hoping she might come again. I could hear ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... and honor in life, and after death brave funeral and a splendid mausoleum:—this world, where, since its making, war has never ceased, nor man paused in the sad task of torturing and murdering his brother; and of which ambition, avarice, envy, hatred, lust, and the rest of Ahriman's and Typhon's army make a Pandemonium: this world, sunk in sin, reeking with baseness, clamorous with sorrow and misery. If any see in it also a type of the sorrow of the Craft for the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... exquisite pleasure, to lash us with scorpion-like whips. The love of Bernard Maddison had thrilled through heart and soul—it had become not a thing of his life, but his whole life. Every impulse and passion of his being had yielded itself up to it. Ambition, intellectual visions, imaginative fancies, all these had been not indeed driven out by this passion, but more fatal still, they had opened their arms to receive it, they had bidden it welcome, and heart and brain and imagination had glowed with a new significance ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... will excuse my tardiness, if not a sin of ingratitude in me. The one enclosed within the little box has been worked up to the finest polish. I beg you to accept and keep this for the love of me. With the other three you will do as you think best. I say this because ambition has prompted me to send copies into Spain and Flanders, as I have also done to Rome and other places. I call it ambition, forasmuch as I have gained an overplus of benefits by acquiring the good-will of your lordship, whom I esteem so highly. Have I not received in little less than three ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... and a depth of two fathoms and a half. At the end of three miles no change was perceptible, and we began to congratulate ourselves on, at last, having found a stream that would carry the boats far towards the point it was always the height of my ambition to reach, the centre ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... after such phrases as "Our first bow to the public"... "Our solemn and bounden duty to the district which it is our highest ambition to serve..." etc. Phrases which had already occurred in the leading article ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... as she wished, as she had urged. The new work would reopen the man's ambition, and that must be. Where a man's work was concerned, nothing—nothing surely of any woman—should intervene. That was her feeling. No woman's pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the decks ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength, which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions by means which reason prescribes, it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... scribe, Giannozzo Manetti, in the chamber of the dying Pope; with much more of the most serious matter to the Church and to Rome. His eager desire to soften all possible controversies and produce in the minds of the conclave about his bed, so full of ambition and the force of life, the softened heart which would dispose them to a peaceful and conscientious election of his successor, is very touching, coming out of the fogs and mists of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... common to artists who finally reach the goal of their ambition was wanting in Diotti this morning. He could not rid himself of the memory of Sanders' tragic death. The figure of the old man clutching the violin and staring with glassy eyes into the dying ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... Jerba was all too small a title for his ambition. He aimed at sovereignty on a large scale, and, Corsair as he was by nature, he wished for settled power almost as much as he delighted in adventure. In 1512 the opportunity he sought arrived. Three years before, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine "plain living and high thinking," until in course of time the family remained ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... foregoing chapters, as you are aware, good reader, happened principally among the poor and humble of life; and this was in accordance with the scope of our narrative, having no higher ambition than to chronicle the lowly annals of that numerous class of the community. Nunc paulo majora. Now we must introduce you into high life. We turn our eyes to one of those grand mansions of the rich,—one of those palaces of the "upper ten,"—where few of the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... established. The queen demanded that the renunciation should be ratified in the most solemn manner by the states of France; but she afterwards waived this demand, in consideration of its being registered in the different parliaments. Such forms are but slender securities against the power, ambition, and interest of princes. The marquis de Torcy frankly owned, that Philip's renunciation was of itself void, as being contrary to the fundamental laws and constitution of the French monarchy; but it was found necessary for the satisfaction of the English people. Every material article ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it. She could manage him better there. She would throw him into the company of educated people and rouse his pride and ambition. She heard his announcement of their departure on the eighth day with ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... being found that some of the members, "through their economy and industry were gathering and, laying up in abundance, while others, through carelessness and bad management, were wasting the funds of the company, each year being increasing in debt." This was very unsatisfactory to those whose ambition was to assure at least the necessaries ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... of competition at the Conservatoire offers the spectators a series of amusing studies, instructive, puzzling and deceptive also at times. Ambition, jealousy, vanity border on loyalty, sensibility, and pride. Most of these young people are preparing themselves to begin a sharp and bitter struggle for life itself. Others—and these are very few—are in search of, if not fame, at least notoriety. They have elected to enter upon this career, ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... Wordsworth who wrote, "The world is too much with us"; and if I could give the secret of my ambition as a novelist in a few words it would be contained in that quotation. My inspiration to write has always come from nature. Character and action are subordinated to setting. In all that I have done I have tried to make people see how the world is too much with them. Getting and spending ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... mean by destiny, that if a man strives all that is in him to attain a laudable object or ambition, and allows of no permanent rebuffs, but comes back at it, again and again—the result is absolutely certain and he need have no worry as to the ultimate success, because it is up to him to use and develop his talent, but the ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... people, and he had valued himself accordingly. Another circumstance had forced him to think well of himself. On his trip to Europe he had met—I needn't say more; but to have won the regard of a woman herself so admirable was bound to elevate him in his own esteem. This event in his life had roused his ambition and filled him with hope. It had made him almost forget, or rather had braced him to battle confidently with, his demon of reputed bad luck. You can imagine the effect when the stimulus, the cause of hope, the reason for striving, was—as ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... be deterred from his humane and kindly purpose by scorn and lack of appreciation in others. And this little incident is worthy of record, for it shows his character, and teaches lessons to us all—lessons which, in these times of eager ambition and selfishness, are very necessary. Let us go and do likewise. If we cannot save a ship we can perhaps save a soul, if only we are patient, persevering, and filled with a loving and Christian sympathy. It is just this desire for usefulness, this willingness to be servants or ministers, and ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... formidable show trailing over the desert. Probably it would have been more impressive if our two donkeys had restrained their ambition, and kept in the rear instead of leading the van. But animals mostly have their own way in these parts, and asses are no exception to this rule. The two baby camels commenced "grousing" with their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... My Airships the distinguished aviator A. Santos-Dumont tells this story of the ambition of his youth and its realization ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... mistake to suppose, "Que les Anglois ont peu d'aptitude pour la musique;" we agree that the remainder of the sentence, "Ceux-ci le savent et ne s'en soucient guere," is altogether inapplicable now, however true it might have been when the lively Jean-Jacques framed the sentence. Our ambition has been roused, or our vanity has been piqued, and we are now pretty much in the same condition with the French, when it was said of them, that they "would renounce a thousand just rights, and pass condemnation on all other things, rather than allow that they are not the first musicians ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... head, since all this trouble was taken to hold me in security. Certain it is that in my chains I thought more rationally, more nobly, reasoned more philosophically on man, his nature, his zeal, his imaginary wants, the effects of his ambition, his passions, and saw more distinctly his dream of earthly good, than those who had imprisoned, or those who guarded me. I was void of the fears that haunt the parasite who servilely wears the fetters of a court, and daily trembles for the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the choices he makes day ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... these fruits of his ambition, and all the honors which attended him, could not yield true and solid satisfaction. Reflecting on the evils and miseries which he had occasioned, and convinced of the emptiness of earthly magnificence, he became disgusted with the splendor that surrounded him, and thought it ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... not 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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... at court, tasting the sweets and bitters of ambition—the caresses of a powerful king, and a still more powerful cardinal—mingled with the envious intrigues and malicious detraction of jealous rivals. Poussin loved not such a life; his free spirit languished, his noble heart was pained; and in 1642, he requested ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... debarred from all career of profitable and honourable distinction in the public service of their own country. I do not wonder that few Irish lawyers, in presence of the mighty power of England, dare to sacrifice personal ambition and interest to what may seem a vain protest against accomplished facts. I do not wish to attack or offend them—as this court expresses it, to impute improper motives to them—by thus simply stating the sad facts which ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... the character of a paper-mill girl. The girl talked about her father in anything but a respectful manner, but seemed to find comfort in the thought of her silk dress. She had never had one yet, and it had long been the goal of her ambition. What color did Katie think would be becoming to her? How would she have it made? ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... some twenty years in public life without his party being in power as many months, and since the party seemed now doomed, as indeed it was, to twenty years of opposition again, he turned to Lord Maitland and said, "Lord Maitland, if you want to be in office, if you have any ambition or wish to be successful in life, shake us off, give us up." But Smith intervened, and with singular hopefulness ventured to prophesy that in two years things would certainly come round again. "Why," replied Burke, "I have already been in a minority nineteen years, and your two years, Mr. Smith, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... not only that all these lands should pass into the hands of the Habsburg family, but also that his grandson should succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire. This ambition, however, was hard of fulfillment, because the French king, Francis I (1515- 1547), feared the encircling of his own country by a united German- Spanish-Italian state, and set himself to preserve what he called the "Balance of Power"—preventing ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... common ambition,' remarked Pitt. 'But this chapel was to be much more than a monument. It was a chantry. The king ordered ten thousand masses to be said here for the repose of his soul; and intended that the monkish establishment should remain ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the St. Lawrence and Mississippi, shall stretch forth their arms to embrace the continent in a great circle of interior navigation: when the Pacific Ocean shall pour into the Atlantic; when man will become more precious than fine gold, and when his ambition will be to subdue the elements, not to subjugate his fellow-creatures, to make fire, water, earth and air obey his bidding, but to leave the poor ethereal mind as the sole thing in Nature ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during Gen. 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 to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... was often under the control or the influence of the parish minister. It generally exerted a great influence for the building of the church and the community. Its teachers were men of scholarly ideals. Its students were from the locality, being selected by ambition for learning, and by their ability to pay ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... achievements and say: "These were my ancestors who fought in that great war and did these glorious things!" What richer legacy can you hand down? This is fame! This is glory! And do not these come of honest ambition? But there are incidents, episodes, deeds that come under the observation only of the few—sometimes of the individual—which, little in themselves and seemingly inconsequential, help to make up the grand story. It is an old, old story now, but the story has become history. A ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... delight; Coupled with mate loving and true, Hath also bid her Dam adieu; And where Aurora first appears, She now hath percht, to spend her years; One to the Academy flew To chat among that learned crew; Ambition moves still in his breast That he might chant above the rest, Striving for more than to do well, That nightingales he might excell. My fifth, whose down is yet scarce gone Is 'mongst the shrubs and bushes flown, And as his wings ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... silently, but not inactively, await the hour of revenge. The victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus soon gave him a presentiment of its approach. Not one of his lofty schemes had been abandoned; and the Emperor's ingratitude had loosened the curb of his ambition. The dazzling splendour of his private life bespoke high soaring projects; and, lavish as a king, he seemed already to reckon among his certain possessions those which he ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... next minute. Challoner was somewhat touched by her frank appeal, and though he saw that she was sufficiently ambitious to subordinate her affection to her desire for her lover's advancement, it was an ambition he could sympathize with. The woman was willing to make a sacrifice. For all that, he felt that he could ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... their whole patrimony. These men are more properly law givers than interpreters of the law; and have united here, as well as in most other provinces, the skill and dexterity of the scribe with the power and ambition of the prince: who can tell where this may lead in a future day? The nature of our laws, and the spirit of freedom, which often tends to make us litigious, must necessarily throw the greatest part of ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... time my mind was completely absorbed by thoughts of my sisters, of Henrietta, of my mother, and of all the happiness I left behind me; but these ideas gradually quitted me as I lost sight of the turrets of La Roche Bernard, and dreams of ambition and of glory took the entire possession of my mind. What schemes! What castles in the air! What noble actions I performed in my postchaise!! I denied myself nothing: wealth, honors, dignities, success of every kind, I merited and I awarded myself ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dreames indeed are Ambition: for the very substance of the Ambitious, is meerely ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... nutrition, secretion, and, in fact, beneficial to all the organic processes. This is not true of vigorous and prolonged mental labor, which is not attended by any of these incidental advantages. If a child attends a school in which mental development supersedes physical culture, an inordinate ambition sways the youthful mind, and its baneful effects upon the health soon become manifest. Rigorous application of the intellectual faculties consumes the blood, exhausts the vital forces, weakens the organic functions, while pallor covers the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... though it be the story of my own father and mother, of my own brother and sister, almost as coldly as I have often done some scene of intended pathos in fiction; but that scene was indeed full of pathos. I was then becoming alive to the blighted ambition of my father's life, and becoming alive also to the violence of the strain which my mother was enduring. But I could do nothing but go and leave them. There was something that comforted me in the idea that I need no longer be a burden,—a fallacious idea, as ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... anywhere if she'll behave herself. They wear me out—her and her father. It's her father that's ruined her, and her living as she's done. Her father never knew anything, and he's made a pet of her, and got her into his way of thinking. It's ridiculous how little ambition they have, and she might marry as well as any girl. There's a marquis that's quite in love with her at this moment, and she's as afraid of him as death, and cries if I even mention him, though he's a nice enough man, if he ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reader of the classics, in translations if not in the originals, a man with a fine taste in fiction and poetry, and a really sound and ripe archaeological knowledge, especially where sacred buildings were concerned. All his instincts, also, were towards respectability. His most burning ambition was to secure a high position in the county in which he lived, and to be classed among the resident gentry. He hated his lawyer's work, and longed to accumulate sufficient means to be able to give it the good-bye and to indulge himself in an existence of luxurious ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... continued the marquise, "he seems to be a man eaten up by ambition. Before his parliamentary attempt, he made, as you doubtless know, a matrimonial attempt upon the Lantys, which ended in the beautiful heiress of that family, into whose good graces he had insinuated himself, being ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... afford a comprehension of itself. But you, who accuse them, and do yourself write contrary to those things which you understood concerning custom, and exhort others under your authority to do the same, confess that you wantonly use the faculty of disputing, out of vain ambition, even on ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Commonwealth. In the country districts crime is practically unknown, and it is common for houses to be left unguarded, and locked doors are rare. The people are kindly and hospitable, and there is very little class distinction. In its place is an equality of opportunity that opens all avenues to those with ambition. Working men and their sons frequently rise to the highest positions the States have to offer, and such an occurrence is so common as to fail to arouse any comment. In politics there is a universal suffrage, every man and woman having a voice ...
— Wheat Growing in Australia • Australia Department of External Affairs
... English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting, not only to the scholar, but to the unlearned reader. Its object should not simply be to render the words of one language into the words of another or to preserve the construction and order of the original;—this is the ambition of a schoolboy, who wishes to show that he has made a good use of his Dictionary and Grammar; but is quite unworthy of the translator, who seeks to produce on his reader an impression similar or nearly similar to that produced by the original. To him the ...
— Charmides • Plato
... of Nordlands. A man of unusual gifts, a member of the Storthing, a born leader, he might have been prime minister long ago, but for the distrust inspired by several unprincipled dealings. Soured by what he considered want of appreciation, balked in his ambition, he was a ready tool when the foreign agent sounded him. At first his patriotism had to be sopped, but that necessity disappeared as the game went on, and perhaps he alone, of the whole far-reaching conspiracy, was prepared to strike at the Union for the benefit ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Somerset, succeeding to the office of guardian of the young king, speedily, under the name of Protector, acquired an authority nothing inferior to the power of an absolute monarch. He had not long held the reins of government when he rendered it evident, that it was a part of his ambition to subdue Scotland, or the better portion of it, into a mere province ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Your clear-headed, healthy boy is the first best critic of what constitutes the very liver and lights of a novel. Nothing but the primitive problems of courage meeting peril, virtue meeting vice, love, hatred, ambition for power and glory, will go down with him. The grown man is more capable of dealing with social subtleties and the problems of conscience, but those sorts of books do not last unless they have ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... since by no other means could peace be more firmly established than by a marriage between the Latian princess and the Trojan hero. Then addressing Turnus, the bold Drances reproached him with having brought upon his country all the horrors of war to gratify his ambition for the honor of a royal wife. "You Turnus," said he, "are the cause of the evils which afflict us. It is through you that so many of our chiefs have perished on the battle field, and that our whole city is in mourning. Have you no pity for your own people? Lay aside ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... the constant clatter of file and volley-firing,—nothing could remind them of the requirements of the time and their own infamy. Their appreciation of duty and honor seemed to have been forgotten; neither hate, ambition, nor patriotism could force them back; but when the columns of mounted provosts charged upon them, they sullenly resumed their muskets and returned to the field. At the foot of the hill to which I have referred the ammunition wagons lay in long ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... becomes of great importance in the progress of the piece; for Johanna's reverse of fortune is brought about by the strange intervention of this dark and sinister parent. He believes his child more prone to ally herself with evil spirits, through a vain and sinful ambition, than, inspired by piety, to emulate the lives of saints. Raimond combats this gloomy notion. He thinks that the love of Johanna, like the most costly fruits, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Branders—had something of an ambition in life. So far as he had done anything, Tip had "trained" with a gang of young hoodlums who were "useful" to the political machine in one of the tough wards of the little city. Tip's ultimate idea was to "get a city job," at good pay, and do little ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... laziness. It isn't that I am willing to stay here a month, but that I am willing to stay here six. Such is the charming, disgusting truth. Have I really outlived the age of energy? Have I survived my ambition, my integrity, my self-respect? Verily, I ought to have survived the habit of asking myself silly questions. I made up my mind long ago to go in for nothing but present success; and I don't care ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... cannot see what he is? He is one of those men whose one ambition is to make themselves friendly in a house where there are women to wheedle. If the wife is young he will strive to wheedle her, and though he may not succeed he must degrade her. Or, if she have daughters, he will never cease ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... temporal authority.] Later, instead of advisers they claimed to be absolute judges in ecclesiastical matters, and when the temporal possessions of the Popedom made the chair of St. Peter an object of ambition to covetous, designing men, the character of Bishop was too often merged in that of Prince, and spiritual power ceased to satisfy those who thought it their duty or their interest to enforce what was in fact an ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... he desired extra money. For a startlingly original ambition had awakened recently in his heart—namely, to pay off a little of the mortgage's ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... man of principle, shall he stand for-ever in our memory and in the human mind? Let his name, like that of Washington, be a lasting rebuke to venality, selfish ambition, bribery, and all political intrigue! He is one more added to the band of blessed bigots which, wiser than any conformists, ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... the times is toward nervous and mental disorder. In the large cities the strain is too constant, the struggle is too keen, the pace is too swift. Haste to be rich, desire to appear rich, or ambition for social distinction has wrecked many a bright, strong intellect. This is the age of the greatest luxury the world has ever seen, and a large proportion of people in cities are living beyond their means, in the gratification of luxurious desires ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... athlete Fernhurst ever produced, who had already got his County cap and played "Rugger" for Richmond. Gordon had seen him bat at Lord's for the Public Schools v. M.C.C., and before he had come to Fernhurst, Lovelace had been the hero of his imagination; ambition could hardly ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... in the world, he entered the Dominican Convent of St Mark, Florence, for what he deemed the good and peace of his soul. He seldom afterwards left it, and that only as directed by his convent superior, or summoned by the Pope. He was a man devoid of personal ambition, pure, humble, and meek. When offered the Archbishopric of Florence as a tribute to his sanctity, he declined it on account of his unworthiness for the office. He would not work for money, and only painted at the command of his prior. He began his painting with ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Fabritius, offered Spinoza the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg (1673). But Spinoza graciously declined it. Although a more welcome or more honorable opportunity to teach could not be conceived, it had never been his ambition to leave his secluded station in life for one involving public obligations. Even in his secluded corner, he found he had aroused more public attention and sentiment than was altogether consonant with the peace and retirement he sought. Besides, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... to that power. He intended to attack the Spanish monarchy at the source of its greatness, in the West Indies; and by a combination of forces on the Continent to wrest the Palatinate from it, and thereby to destroy the position which it had won on the Middle Rhine. A strange ambition, although in keeping with the age and with his personal character, appears to have been connected with this design. It had entered into his head to marry his daughter to the Electoral Prince Palatine, and perhaps to give his daughter the appearance of a higher rank ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... vices opposed to magnanimity; and in the first place, those that are opposed thereto by excess. These are three, namely, presumption, ambition, and vainglory. Secondly, we shall consider pusillanimity which is opposed to it by way of deficiency. Under the first head there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... we have done here flows from ambition to exalt ourselves above others, for as we have great cause, so we desire grace from the Lord, to be sensible of what accession we have with others in the land, to the provoking of His Spirit, in not walking as becomes the Gospel, according to our Solemn Engagements, neither proceeds it from ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... describes as "the leaf-gold which the devil has laid over the backside of ambition, to make it glitter ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... I held upon my selfish, road, And left my brother wounded by the way, And called ambition duty, and pressed on— O Lord, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... with a sigh. 'I have kept you out in the cold so long, Mary. Lesbia—well, Lesbia has been a kind of infatuation for me, and like all infatuations mine has ended in disappointment and bitterness. Ambition has been the bane of my life, Mary; and when I could no longer be ambitious for myself—when my own existence had become a mere death in life, I began to dream and to scheme for the aggrandisement of my granddaughter. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... perpetual banishment to the island, persons convicted of treason or heresy being alone excepted. The advice was instantly adopted, without a thought of the consequences of reinforcing the malignant ambition of the colony with such elements. Persons capitally convicted were to serve two years without wages; all others were to serve on the same terms for one year; and they went about with the ingenious clog of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... on; for Russell's sake, and at his earnest wish, Eric had worked harder than he ever did before. All his brilliant abilities, all his boyish ambition, were called into exercise; and to the delight of every one, he gained ground rapidly, and seemed likely once more to dispute the palm with Owen. No one rejoiced more in this than Mr Rose, and he often gladdened Russell's heart by telling him about ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... temporary position until the church at Sandycliffe had been restored and was ready for use; the living had been already promised to him, and small as it was, he wished to hold it, at least for the present. Raby was a man singularly devoid of ambition, and though he must have been conscious that his were no common gifts, he always told us that he did not wish a wider sphere until he had tested his powers, and had worked a little ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... perspiration. The car-pushers were all foreigners—Italians, Bohemians, Hungarians, or Poles—and the uncouth jargon of their shouts intensified the wildness of their appearance. Theirs was the very lowest form of mine drudgery, and but few of them were possessed of intelligence or ambition sufficient to raise them ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... in cinemas," said Crewe, "and when he is not there he is acting picture dramas. His ambition in life is to be a ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... higher, socially, is regarded indeed, in some subtile way, as a richer man, than the merchant or banker who may be worth his hundred thousand or half million of dollars, provided he has no slaves. To come to be the owner of negroes, and of more and more negroes, is the social ambition, the aristocratic purpose and pretension of the whole Southern people. It is by virtue of this mystical prestige of the institution itself; which couples the charms of wealth with the exercise of authority, or a ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... globe. It has been always the first object of attack in the French invasions, and, with all its fortifications, has always been taken. The Prussians are now laying out immense sums upon it, and evidently intend to make it an indigestible morsel to the all-swallowing ambition of their neighbours; but it is to be hoped that nations are growing wiser—a consummation to which they are daily arriving by growing poorer. Happily for Europe, there is not a nation on the Continent which would not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... sometimes to have the making of them all over again? Then they will have everything to enjoy, so there will be nothing left to hope for. Then there will be no spice of peril in their loves, no keen edge that comes of enforced denial; and the game of life will be too sure for ambition to keep its savour. "There is no thrill, no excitement nowadays," one can almost fancy their saying, and, like children playing with their bricks, "Now let us knock it all down, and build another, one. It ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... blessed Peter [bishop of Alexandria]. But when all these bishops, presbyters, and deacons had suffered in the prison,(91) he at once entered Alexandria. Now in that city there was a certain person, Isidorus by name, turbulent in character, and possessed with the ambition of being a teacher. And there was also a certain Arius, who wore the habit of piety and was in like manner possessed with the ambition of being a teacher. And when they discovered the object of Meletius's passion and what it was ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... tired of quoting her. It was she who told me that this talented lady was engaged upon a book the title of which was Footsteps of Women in All Ages. The aunt returned this admiration in no stinted measure, and her highest ambition seemed centred in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... temp'rate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design. Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline? Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms; Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind; Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs; Account for moral as for nat'ral things: Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right, is ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... she continued, sinking down with a sigh of content on the pillowed lounge near the fire. "Louisa Bry is a stern task-master: I often used to wish myself back with the Gormers. Talk of love making people jealous and suspicious—it's nothing to social ambition! Louisa used to lie awake at night wondering whether the women who called on us called on ME because I was with her, or on HER because she was with me; and she was always laying traps to find out what I thought. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... well pleased; and Mrs. Oldfield, full of importance and maternal solicitude. Vanbrugh, with his good-humoured smile and military bearing, talks in a fatherly way to the daughter, is deeply impressed with her many attractions, and is not sorry to learn that her ambition is all for comedy. He promises to use his good offices with Mr. Rich to have her enrolled as a member of the Drury Lane company, keeps his word, too—something for a gentleman to do in the year 1699—and soon has the satisfaction of seeing his new protegee hobnobbing with Mrs. Verbruggen, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the rebellious and disaffected Scots, and swearing death alone should prevent the complete and terrible extermination of the traitors. He had proceeded in this spirit to Carlisle, disregarding the threatening violence of disease, so sustained by the spirit of disappointed ambition within as scarcely to be conscious of an almost prostrating increase of weakness and exhaustion. He had determined to make a halt of some weeks at Carlisle, to wait the effect of the large armies he had sent forward to overrun Scotland, and to receive intelligence of the measures ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... lodging of the colonists, large preparations are made. They are graded according to their position in the colony, and an opportunity is given them to rise from the lower to the higher grades. The superintendent stated that this plan was found useful in stimulating ambition. There are two dormitories, both clean and well-kept, but the higher grade with better bedding and surroundings than the lower. This grading system is also maintained in the dining room, the higher grade of colonists being served with better food than the lower. ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... required in the play. No one had genius nor ambition enough to create an entire one, but a very realistic head was constructed, and this, fastened to a broomstick and thrust forward at the psychological moment, produced a startling and thrilling effect. The audience was stirred to its depth. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... book have undertaken to prepare an interwoven story of the Life of Jesus from the four Gospels for popular reading. A booklet that may be carried in the pocket, and may be sold, in paper binding, for ten cents, has been their ambition. They have been led to this undertaking by the large demand for copies of their booklet, "HIS LAST WEEK," which comprises the last third of this volume, whose use at Easter time has brought them many requests ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... factory, or anything that came in her way, being anxious to educate her little girl. Now, as she sat beside the bed in the small, poor room, that hope almost died within her, for here was the child laid up for months, probably, and the one ambition and pleasure of the solitary woman's life was to see Janey Pecq's name over all the high marks in the school-reports she ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... on everything that is fit to be taken, and, a few days after this, 30,000 francs are found in his carpet-bag.-Taught by the example others follow and the commotion spreads. In every borough or petty town the club profits by these acts to satiate its ambition its greed, and its hatred. That of Apt appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National Guards of Gordes, St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women and children armed with clubs and scythes, arrive one morning before ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... no visible effect upon his workpeople, I cannot say I envy or admire him. But if the sight of him is followed by a stir of movement, if there come upon [13] each labourer fresh spirit, with mutual rivalry and keen ambition, drawing out the finest qualities of each, [14] of him I should say, Behold a man of kingly disposition. And this, if I mistake not, is the quality of greatest import in every operation which needs the instrumentality of man; but most of all, perhaps, in agriculture. Not that I would maintain ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... Ah! better far than this, to stray about 250 Voluptuously through fields and rural walks, And ask no record of the hours, resigned To vacant musing, unreproved neglect Of all things, and deliberate holiday. Far better never to have heard the name 255 Of zeal and just ambition, than to live Baffled and plagued by a mind that every hour Turns recreant to her task; takes heart again, Then feels immediately some hollow thought Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 260 This is my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... clerks in Paris who are not endowed, like Rabourdin, with patriotic ambition or other marked capacity, usually add the profits of some industry to the salary of their office, in order to eke out a living. A number do as Monsieur Saillard did,—put their money into a business ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... I drive a gilded chariot, and can afford to wait for books with quieter titles and more dramatic worth to bring me their slow earnings, I shall be presumptuous enough to set such a star before my ambition as the masters of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... dinner, and over the last bottle of "Mouton," a circumstance which also had determined him in his resolution. "You might," said his father thoughtfully, "offer yourself to some rising American novelist as a study for the new hero,—one absolutely without ambition, capacity, or energy; willing, however, to be whatever the novelist chooses to make him, so long as he hasn't to choose for himself. If your inordinate self-consciousness is still in your way, I could give him a few ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... to ambition, far from courts remov'd, Though qualified to fill the statesman's part, He studied nature in the paths he lov'd, Peace in his thoughts, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... entirely ignorant of what had formerly taken place between her friend and Georges at Savigny. Her own life was so upright, her mind so pure, that it was impossible for her to divine the jealous, mean-spirited ambition that had grown up by her side within the past fifteen years. And yet the enigmatical expression in that pretty face as it smiled upon her gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness which she could not understand. An affectation of politeness, strange enough between ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... however, Dermot grew a little older, and the idea was suggested to him, he indignantly refused to accept the offers made him. In the first place, nothing would induce him to leave his mother, and in the second, he had no ambition to become like Father O'Rourke, for whom it must be confessed, that at a very early age the boy had entertained a considerable antipathy. Even with the widow, though she was ignorant and superstitious, Father O'Rourke had never ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... honor us with their presence during practice," announced Nora. "I asked Jessica to-day, and she said that they didn't want to know how we intended to play, for then they could wax enthusiastic and make a great deal more noise. It is their ambition to become loud ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... he had no country, no God, but his ambition. He made his motion, and resumed his seat, with the utmost ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Behind all war has been the pressure of population. "Historians," says Huxley, "point to the greed and ambition of rulers, the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the devastating wars which have formed a great part of the occupation of mankind, as the causes of the decay of states ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... not so ready to console themselves with mere physical comforts, for the severance from the enjoyment of cultivated life, and all the objects of honorable ambition. Despairing of the arrival of any chance ship on these shunned and dreaded islands, they fitted out the long-boat, making a deck of the ship's hatches, and having manned her with eight picked men, despatched her, under the command of an able and hardy mariner, named Raven, to ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... you, my sons! Cease now from these austerities and ask boons of me! Whatever your desires may be, they, with the single exception of that of immortality, will be fulfilled! As thou hast offered thy heads to the fire from great ambition, they will again adorn thy body as before, according to thy desire. And thy body will not be disfigured and thou shall be able to assume any form according to thy desire and become the conqueror of thy foes in battle. There is no doubt of this!" thereupon Ravana said, "May I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
