"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother, while the latter knitted her jerseys and sea-stockings for sale, and Jack made or mended sails and fishing-nets, or carved little trifles for Estelle with the view of teaching her. She was an apt pupil, enjoying these lessons and showing much ambition to out-rival her master. Thus her strange life and surroundings occupied her thoughts fully, and very seldom did she appear confused by any chance word recalling a forgotten memory. Mrs. Wright, watching ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... violate all the holier feelings of our nature, and excite a disgust of which it is divested in civilized life. In the latter case we see certain privileges even hereditarily enjoyed; but the weak and strong, the rich and poor, the young and old have paths of honourable ambition laid open to them by entering on which they can gain like immunities. While in the savage condition we find the female sex, the young, and the weak, condemned to a hopeless state of degradation and to a lasting deprivation of particular advantages merely because they are defenceless; ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... lithe, sinewy, with a faint hint of rib and a wonderful bust; her brain was good, intuitive in its non-educated state, and subtle from inheritance; her ambition was superb, it knew no ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... politics. A little Machiavelli, master of himself and others, with a heart as cold as his head, a lucid, bored intelligence, knowing how and daring to use all means to gain his ends, ready to sacrifice all his friends to his ambition, would be capable of sacrificing his ambition to one thing only: his quieto vivere. They needed long periods of absolute lassitude. When they issued from them, as from a good sleep, they were fresh ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... which you or I would aim at, a man needs not only political insight, but he needs to be able to adopt his views to the practical programme of one of the existing parties, or else to be strong enough to form a party of his own. That is where I have come to the cul-de-sac in my career. It was my ambition to guide the working classes of the country into their rightful place in our social scheme, but I have also always been an intensely keen Imperialist, and therefore at daggers drawn with many of the so-called Labour leaders. The consequence has been that for ten years I have been ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Company, even if you didn't get shot, you could only hope to rise to the command of a regiment, ranking with a civilian very low down on the list. The stupidity of boys is unaccountable. It's a splendid career, sir, that I have opened to you; but if I'd known that you had no ambition, I would have put you into my own counting house; though there, that wouldn't have done either, for I know you would have blotted the ledger, and ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... years ago, the socialistic ideal had not gripped us so effectually as it has done in the last decade, but he had no difficulty in observing the tendency. Civilization in some later cycle may wonder at our ambition to abandon individual liberty and responsibility and to subside into the social instincts of the ant; and even as it wonders, that far-off civilization may detect in itself ant-like reactions which we cultivated for it. With this ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... Britons prize too high, Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie; See, though by circling deeps together held, Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd; Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar, Represt ambition struggles round her shore, Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels. Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay, As duty, love, and honour fail to sway, Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law, Still gather strength, and force ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... striking divergences begin to appear. The play mood, instead of approaching the calm contemplative mood of the lover of beauty, involves feelings and impulses which lie at the roots of our practical interests, viz. ambition, rivalry and struggle. It has, moreover, in all its stages a palpable utility—-even though this is not realized by the player—-serving for the exercise and development of body, intelligence and character. Beauty and art rise high above play in purity of the disinterested attitude, in placid ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cause of his returne into France. Neuerthelesse, hee and his company commended the Countrey to bee very rich and fruitfull. (M206) But when our Generall being furnished with sufficient forces, commanded him to goe backe againe with him, hee and his company, mooued as it seemeth with ambition, because they would haue all the glory of the discouerie of those partes themselues, stole priuily away the next night from vs, and without taking their leaues departed home ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Ambition is a proud covetousness, a dry thirst of honour, the longing disease of reason, an aspiring and gallant madness. The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares how to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear of a fall. Having once cleaved like a burr to some ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the primary virtue keeps in the matter that is most difficult of all. St. Thomas calls these potential parts of Temperance. There is question here of what is most difficult to man as an animal, not of what is most difficult to him as a rational being. To rational man, as such, ambition is harder to restrain than sensuality: which is proved by the fact that fewer men, who have any ambition in them, do restrain that passion than those who restrain the animal propensities that are common to all. But to man as an animal (and vast numbers of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... son has engaged himself," said one mother, "dear innocent boy; his greatest ambition is that he may one day creep into a clergyman's ear. That is a very artless and loveable wish; and being engaged will keep him steady. What happiness ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... an old story, not in every case with the same details, but horribly common,—a man of the finest possibilities, of sturdy character, rising up to the heights of ambition, then losing his head, playing the game wantonly for mere pride and habit in it,—his judgment giving way, but playing on, stumbling, grasping at this and that to stop his sliding feet, breaking the elementary laws! And finally, in the face of disaster, alone in a hotel room ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... crusaders against the wild forces of nature, the savage and the shallow politician. His name and memory were revered, equally with any upon the list comprising Houston, Boone, Crockett, Clark, and Green. He had lived simply, independently, and unvexed by ambition. Even a less shrewd man than Senator Kinney could have prophesied that his state would hasten to honour and reward his grandson, come out of the chaparral at even so ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... his gaze always seemed to be on the minister, in the latter he showed no signs of flagging as a trencher companion. Both mothers thought her marvellously discreet; but neither beheld the strange tumult in her heart, where were surging pride, vanity, ambition, and wounded affection. ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and this was a stranger. He was thrown suddenly in the position of a defender of the helpless. "That's the way with these kids," he confided carelessly to the stranger. "They get out and ride fast for a couple of hours. Full of ambition, they are. But just when a growed man gets warmed up to his work; they're ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Woman's ambition was not confined at this period to literature and the learned professions; she found herself capable of practical work on a large scale in the department of agriculture. The Philadelphia ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... designs on Bavaria. An alliance, too, between the Empress of Russia and the Republic of Venice, seems to have had him in view, as he had meditated some exchange of territory with that republic. This desertion of the powers heretofore thought friendly to him, seems to leave no issue for his ambition, but on the side of Turkey. His demarkation with that country is still unsettled. His difference with the Dutch is certainly agreed. The articles are not yet made public; perhaps not quite adjusted. Upon the whole, we may count on another year's peace in Europe, and that our friends will not, within ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... construed and hawked at, and torn, till if its framers could rise from their graves they could not at all recognize it. All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house, they have searched his person and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him; and now they have him, as it were, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... himself we turn, for one brief glance before laying down the pen. In the evil times of the Restoration, in the land of the Philistines, Agonistes but unconquerable, the Puritan Samson ended his days. Serene and strong; conscious that the ambition of his youth had been achieved, he begins the day with the Hebrew Bible, listens reverently to words in which Moses or David or Isaiah spake of God. But he attends no church, belongs to no communion, and has ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... words, but more at the admiration in Samuel's eyes, a new idea came to him. He knew his clerk well, knew his restless ambition, his insatiable greed, his intense selfishness, his indomitable will. And he had good reason to know. Three times during the past year his clerk had forced from him an increase of salary. Indeed, Samuel Sprink, young though ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the volume are more various than in the preceding stories, which were so largely a repetition of battle scenes; but the hero is still as earnest as ever in the cause he loves. He attains a high position without any ambition to win it; for, like millions of others who gave the best years of their lives to sustain the Union, who suffered the most terrible hardships and privations, so many hundreds of thousands giving ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... which the kingdom was recalled by the Revolution of 1383, the overthrow of Castille on the battle-field of Aljubarrota, and the accession of John of Aviz. Once more intensely, narrowly national, one might almost say provincial, in peninsular matters, Portugal then returned to its older ambition of being, not a make weight in Spanish politics, but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime Europe. Almost ceasing to be Spanish, she was, by that very transfer of interest from land to sea, fitted for ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... not long taken out his warrant. He was a prime seaman, with nothing very remarkable in his appearance, except that he was tall and thin, and had a long bushy beard, now somewhat grizzled. The aforesaid individual, Mr Popples, was neat and clean, and had really good manners; his great ambition being to rise in the world, though he had begun to ascend rather late in life. We youngsters had a great respect for him, notwithstanding some of his peculiarities, and should never have dreamed of playing him the tricks ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... There exists, however, in Natal a knot of politicians who are doubtless desirous of the change, partly because they think that it would be really beneficial, and partly because they are possessed by a laudable ambition to fill the high positions of Prime Minister, Treasurer, &c., in the future Parliament. But these gentlemen for the most part live in towns, where they are comparatively safe should a native rising occur. I have not noticed the ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... forward new men; they must encourage the efforts of those now unrecognized and comparatively unknown; they must overcome all reserve and false shame, and act as became men called upon to a critical and leading part, not by their arrogance or ambition, but by the desertion and treachery of those to whose abilities they had bowed without impatience and reluctance. There was a probability of several vacancies immediately taking place in counties where the seats were filled by converts, but men of ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... way life went on with the occupants of the saloon for some time; but at length ambition entered into and seized upon the imagination of Miss Stanhope, and she determined to learn to steer. Hour after hour had she watched the helmsmen standing in more or less graceful attitudes at the wheel, with their sinewy hands ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... that's what it comes to, unless you're swept away by ambition or driven by conviction. I haven't the conviction or the ambition, and the other thing is what it comes to with me. I ought to have been a preacher, after all; then I couldn't have asked it of myself, as I must, now I'm a lawyer. And you believe it's ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... or less clearly in all of his acts." They are first "self-interest," but "this does not mean that he is steeped in selfishness ..."; secondly, "the larger self," the family, union, club, and "in times of emergency his country"; thirdly, "love of independence," for "his ambition is to stand on his own feet"; fourthly, "business ethics" which "are not usually as high as the standards professed in churches, but they are much higher than current criticisms of business would lead one to think." Three-quarters ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called knowledge, but ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... which now characterises the people of Paris, wearied as they are of novelty and excitement. As far as one can judge, it does not seem that the lower orders take much interest in this marriage; the ambition and vanity of his partisans have been wounded by it, and, of course, his enemies do not scruple to calumniate and slander the unfortunate object of ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... time, as we have seen, the Christian Church, through the ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had been brought into a condition of anarchy. Councils had been held on various pretenses, while the real motives were concealed. Too often they were scenes of violence, bribery, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... before then, mix with the world of men as I did ere I learned these secrets, resume eager interest in their strife and their trouble—battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the power that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... most striking and conspicuous figures of his time, a man of brilliant abilities, a great orator, one who distinguished himself without effort in any sphere of activity he chose to enter, but whose natural gifts were marred by a restless ambition and instability of character fatal to real greatness. Clarendon describes him as "the only man I ever knew of such incomparable parts that was none the wiser for any experience or misfortune that befell him," and records his extraordinary facility in making friends and making enemies. Horace ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... tobacco abstainers. This is proved by the result of repeated and extensive comparisons of the advanced classes in a great number of institutions in this country and in Europe. So true is this that any young man who aspires to a noble career should bid farewell either to his honorable ambition or to his tobacco, for the two very rarely travel together. Consequently our military and naval academies and very many seminaries and colleges prohibit the use of tobacco by their students. For the same reasons the laws of many states very properly forbid the sale to boys of tobacco, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... meeting him in his wild freedom in the woods were unknown to me till, one cold winter day, drawn thither by the baying of a hound, I stood near the summit of the mountain, waiting a renewal of the sound, that I might determine the course of the dog and choose my position,—stimulated by the ambition of all young Nimrods to bag some notable game. Long I waited, and patiently, till, chilled and benumbed, I was about to turn back, when, hearing a slight noise, I looked up and beheld a most superb fox, loping along with inimitable grace and ease, evidently disturbed, but not ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... was entirely independent. No obstacles were placed in her way—the particular form that her ambition took was suggested by the war, but in any case she would have done something. She had taken the usual means ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... derives its tone, and it has become too much the main object of their education to cultivate the accomplishments which may make them such. A twofold injury has arisen from this mistaken aim; it has blinded women as to the true nature and end of their existence, and has excited a spirit of worldly ambition opposed to the devoted unselfishness necessary for its accomplishment. This is the error of the unthinking—the reflecting have fallen into another, but not less serious one. The coarse, but expressive satire ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the responsibilities of his position were such as it would require great hardihood of character to shrink from. It was reported at the time that he did not rest content with abandoning a post which he had attained with intense ambition, but exerted his utmost influence with the people against an enterprise which he designated as rash, ill-designed, and fraught with ruin to the town. This report has been repeated as a fact by the present writer, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... soon dissipated our fatigue. We had at last conquered this formidable crest. We overlooked all the others, and the thoughts which Mont Blanc alone can inspire affected us with a deep emotion. It was ambition satisfied; and to me, at least, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... won fame for Hebbel and yielded some immediate pecuniary gain. But although he had reached the goal of his ambition in having become a poet, and a dramatist whose first play had appeared on the stage, he still lacked a settled occupation and a sure income. Having been born a Danish subject, he conceived the idea ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... nations. And while everywhere else parts were uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... don't! I thought perhaps you did. But then, of course, you're a man. It's one of the new ladies' penny papers. I believe it's doing rather well now. I write interviews for it. You see, Mr. Knight, I have a great ambition to be a regular journalist, and in my spare time at Mr. Snyder's, and in the evenings, I write—things. I'm getting quite a little connection. What I want to obtain is a regular column in some really good paper. It's rather awkward, me being engaged all ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... prehistoric ancestors would never have handed down such a tremendous ambition to you and me if they, at that time, had not been able to point to some definite feat and say, 'That proves I'm a bigger man ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... the voices of nature, in sky, and sea, and storm; the voices of childhood and of early youth; the voices of playfellows and companions,—voices long stilled, it may be, in death; the voices of lover and beloved; the voices of ambition, of sorrow, of aspiration, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Governors of Bombay and the rest of the Presidencies would be animated by the same spirit, and so you would have all over India, as I have said, a rivalry for good; you would have placed a check on that malignant spirit of ambition which has worked so much evil—you would have no Governor so great that you could not control him, none who might make war when he pleased; war and annexation would be greatly checked, if not entirely prevented; and I do in my conscience believe ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... side, and a certain dislike to the dogmatism of the clergy—I speak generally—I may have appeared to you indifferent, but I assure you that I have laboured much to withdraw my mind from the influence of money, and ambition, and pleasure, and to turn it to the contemplation of spiritual things. Yet on the first attack of a depressing illness I cease to be a gentleman, I am rude to ladies who do their best and kindest ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... ambition of extreme youth," said Mr. Hepworth, looking at her kindly, if quizzically. "Do you want to reform the world, and ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... explained with honor to Robert. The conduct which his parents had ascribed to indifference really sprang from affection; he had neither obeyed the voice of ambition nor of avarice, nor even the nobler inspiration of inventive genius; his whole motive and single aim had been the happiness of Genevieve and Michael. The day for proving his gratitude had come, and he had returned them sacrifice ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... back'd, Proves that a single penny, At present held, and certain, Is worth five times as many, Of Hope's, beyond the curtain; That one should be content with his condition, And shut his ears to counsels of ambition, More faithless than the wreck-strown sea, and which Doth thousands beggar where it makes one rich,— Inspires the hope of wealth, in glorious forms, And blasts the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... of mankind; nor can I support the idea of his marrying any other woman: I would therefore marry him to-morrow were it possible without ruining him, without dooming him to a perpetual exile, and obstructing those views of honest ambition at home, which become his birth, his connexions, his talents, his time of life; and with which, as his friend, it is my duty ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... of that divine discontent which is half the equipment of Scottish youth. Rather did he possess ambition's surest antidote in a mild and kindly cynicism which stripped endeavor of ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... that proud attitude and the respectful staff, he might have seen what was lost, and have come out bringing pity for his people. Might have said to the crowd that gave him that ovation, as we read, outside the door: "My pride has driven you to this needless war, my ambition has made a sacrifice of millions, but it is over, and it shall be no more; I will make ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... the world before they have acquired the confidence that comes only with habit and success. After he has gained a foothold at this classic theatre, an actor still sees prizes held out to stimulate his ambition. If he keeps the promise of his youth, he may hope to be chosen a stockholder (societaire), and thus obtain a share both in the direction of affairs and in the profits, besides a retiring pension, depending in, amount upon his term ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ambition to excel, which roused him to counteract his indolence. He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read. Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he repeated verbatim, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... equal your almost maternal affection for me, would last beyond the limits prescribed for human feeling. This sublime privilege of prolonging the life in our hearts by the life of our works would be, if there were ever a certainty in this respect, a recompense for all the labor it costs those whose ambition is such. Yet again I say: May God ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... his little mistress home have brought many changes. He is only a tender memory now. A square, white stone stands on the lawn where "taps" were sounded over him one September day, long ago. But the sight of it no longer brings pain to the Little Colonel. With the sweet ambition in her heart to make life happier for every one she touches, she has grown up into a ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... pains to make my young prima donna a most accomplished person. In learning to sing she must also learn the language which is especially the language of music. I shall perfect her in the accent when I take her to Italy. It is the height of my ambition to have her mistaken for an Italian when she sings in public. Is there anything I can do before I leave you again? May I send you some more champagne? ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... the monk who heard the confession of a certain cardinal. "I am the chief of sinners," said the cardinal. "It is true," said the monk. "I have been guilty of every kind of sin," sighed the cardinal. "It is a solemn fact, my son," said the monk. "I have indulged in pride, in ambition, malice, and revenge," continued his Eminence. The provoking confessor assented without one pitying word of doubt or protest. "Why you fool," at last said the exasperated cardinal, "you don't imagine I mean all this to the letter?" "Ho, ho!" said the monk, "so you have been ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Larry found himself held up by a long procession of young German reservists singing with the utmost vigour and with an unmistakable note of triumph the German national air, "Die Wacht Am Rhein," and that newer song which embodied German faith and German ambition, "Deutschland Uber Alles." When he arrived at the office that afternoon he was surprised to find that he was unable to go on with his work for the trembling of his hands. In the office he was utterly alone, for, however his friends there might take pains to show ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... promising field for men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... perfectly new, and in the merit of which the empress Catharine had no small personal share. Her example awakened not a few Mecaenases among the magnates of the country; and it became a point of high ambition to favour literature ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... river-bottom that lay adjacent to it, and there build his home. His worldly goods at the time of this decision consisted of a pair of jeans trousers, a hickory shirt, and a battered straw hat. For years he had forgotten his boyish ambition. He had made his way in the world; he had won success in his profession, the law; he had won even greater distinction as a soldier in the Civil War; he had been a national figure in politics, and he had been governor of his state. And ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... walks of ordinary authorship—may be regarded as specimens of the class. Even in the cases in which its members did become authoresses, and produced songs and ballads instinct with genius, they seem to have had but little of the author's ambition in them; and their songs, cast carelessly upon the waters, have been found, after many days, preserved rather by accident than design. The Lady Wardlaw, who produced the noble ballad of "Hardyknute"—the Lady Ann Lindsay, who wrote "Auld ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... coadjutor had been working for years at a commentary on the Hebrew text of the Four Greater Prophets. It had been the cherished and chosen task of his life; he had brought to it great stores of learning, accumulated in the vigour of his powers, and the enthusiasm of a youthful ambition, and he had employed upon it every spare hour left him from his professional duties. He looked to it as the means of doing essential service to the church of which he was an ordained member, and, secondarily, as the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... could indicate the presence of Frenchmen. Once more descending the river, they soon reached its mouth. Before them, a broad eddying current rolled swiftly on its way; and La Salle beheld the Mississippi, the object of his day-dreams, the destined avenue of his ambition and his hopes. It was no time for reflections. The moment was too engrossing, too heavily charged with anxieties and cares. From a rock on the shore, he saw a tree stretched forward above the stream; and stripping off its ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... grandiose enterprise of remodeling the communities of the world without becoming conversant with their interests, acquainted with their needs, or even aware of their whereabouts. For their failure, which was inevitable, was also bound to be tragic, inasmuch as it must involve, not merely their own ambition to live in history as the makers of a new and regenerate era, but also the destinies of the nations and races which confidently looked up to them for the conditions of future pacific progress, nay, of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... assumption that competition rather than co-operation is the effective means of promoting social well-being. Acting under this theory, each man is to forage for himself. This individual activity was relied upon to promote initiative and to stimulate ambition. In practice, capitalist society has been compelled to abandon competition in many of its aspects. Monopoly is the opposite of competition, yet the modern capitalist world is full of monopoly because monopoly pays better than competition—it ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... have been great changes since I was at school. I believe the rising generation is developing a nobler ambition than ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... character and mode of thought she could respect. He was a man whom any woman might probably be able to respect. But Caroline Waddington wanted much more than this in her future lord. She could talk pleasantly of the probability of her marrying a country parson; but she had, in truth, a much wider ambition for herself. She would never marry—such was the creed which was to govern her own life—without love; but she would not allow herself to love where love would interfere with her high hopes. In her catalogue of human blisses love in a cottage was not entered. She was not avaricious; she did ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... obligations; but it had never ripened into the confidence of friendship on Warde's side, while on Sir Arnold's it had been but a well-played comedy to hide his rising hatred for the Lady Goda's husband. And she, on her side, played her part as well. An alliance in which ambition had held the place of heart could not remain an alliance at all when ambition had been altogether disappointed. She hated her husband for having disappointed her; she despised him for having made nothing of his many gifts ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... wood, a few inches long, standing upright and bearing the name of Confucius in Chinese characters. The temple contains several stone tablets, on which are engraved the records of honor conferred on literary men, and it is the height of a Chinese scholar's ambition to win a place here. There are several fine trees in the spacious court yard, and they are said to have been planted by the Mongol dynasty more than five hundred years ago. The building is a magnificent one, and contains many curious relics of the various dynasties, ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... regretted her inaction, and grieved unavailingly over the fact that she had stopped to write the account of the disaster which befell the Caloric. Had she not done so, all might have been well, but her great ambition to be counted the best-newspaper woman in New York, and to show the editor that she was equal to any emergency that might arise, had undone her. While it would have been possible for her to send away one telegram, her desire to write the second had resulted in her sending none ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... happened bunched like he asserts. Which I gets notice of these pecooliarities of fortune early. While I'm simply doin' nothin' to provoke it, a gust of bad luck prounces on me an' thwarts me in a noble ambition, rooins my social standin' an busts two of my nigh ribs ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... passed so much of his life amongst the wild and lawless tribesmen, with whom his authority was supreme. Intercourse with this man amongst men made me more eager than ever to remain on the frontier, and I was seized with ambition to follow in his footsteps. Had I never seen Nicholson again, I might have thought that the feelings with which he inspired me were to some extent the result of my imagination, excited by the astonishing stories ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... I cannot close this history without a few words on the character and conduct of Mr. Jefferson Davis, to whose ambition this siege of our capital was due. It has been said by several of his friends, who have access to the newspapers, that he went into this war not only very reluctantly, but with green spectacles on. Willing as I am to deal generously with him, and to forgive him each and every one of his ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... my great ambition now to catch a broadbill. That would completely round out my fishing experience. And I shall try. But I doubt that I will be so fortunate. It takes a long time. Boschen was years catching his fish. Moreover, though it is hard to get a ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... troops of friends, and not been reduced to the horrors of poverty and a faithful Hag. But, sir, when I first took to my bosom that fiend William Waife, he exhibited a genius, sir, that Dowton (you have seen Dowton?—grand) was a stick as compared with. Then my ambition, sir, blazed and flared up-obstreperous, and my childhood's dream haunted me; and I went about musing [Hag, you recollect!]—and muttering 'The Royal Theatre at York.' But, incredible though it ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... any other desire than that of strict, faithful, impartial justice. Restlessly to seek among the ancient institutions for illustrations (rarely apposite) of the modern, is, indeed, to desert the character of a judge for that of an advocate, and to undertake the task of the historian with the ambition of the pamphleteer. Though designing this work not for colleges and cloisters, but for the general and miscellaneous public, it is nevertheless impossible to pass over in silence some matters which, if apparently trifling in themselves, have acquired dignity, and even ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a reason of the succession and continuance of boundless ambition in mortal men, we may add, that the kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions, but not the ends of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other, till ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... fill. What I shall lose in attainments, I will endeavour to make up in Christian conduct. That God, who is the sole Dispenser of all the blessings that has been showered upon my path, claims my first duty. My next ambition will be to fulfil my ministry with that zeal and decorum which characterize the spirit of our venerable Establishment; while gratitude will prompt me to dedicate my leisure hours to the ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun
... understood what you have said," answered Almayer, scornfully, "he must be highly flattered. You want him as a tool for some incomprehensible ambition of yours. Enough, Nina. If you do not go down at once to the creek, where Ali is waiting with my canoe, I shall tell him to return to the settlement and bring the Dutch officers here. You cannot escape from this clearing, for I have cast adrift your canoe. If the Dutch catch this hero ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... duke of Orleans, which, in the sequel, brought these great personages to the scaffold—Their improper example imitated by the nobility of both sexes—The projects of each defeated—The duke's pusillanimity was a bar to his ambition—He exhausted his immense fortune to gain partisans, and secure the attachment of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... interrupted cheerfully enough, "and if you could I am not sure I should let you now. I've an ambition to complete my wilderness education, and though I'm no butcher, I'll manage this piece of work somehow. You will have to give me instructions, and though I may botch the business, I'll save the ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... been waiting to hear that. I am exceedingly glad to know that he has so noble an ambition. But Miss Devereux isn’t encouraging him, as near as I can make out. She refused to go to California with his ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing the proposal. The Senate became a Hanway propaganda. Even the opposition, so far as slightly lay with them, were pleasantly willing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... become great in any particular field, to attain to fame and honor, and thereby to happiness and contentment? Is it your ambition, for example, to become a great orator, to move great masses of men, to receive their praise, their plaudits? Then remember that there never has been, there never will, in brief, there never can be a truly great orator without ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... composing, a lively and, what is called, a 'masterly' handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course the objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate these dazzling excellences, which they will find no great labour in attaining. After much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to retreat; but it will then be too late; and there is scarce ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... sparkling eyes, and down his breast hung a long, thick beard. Though subject to violent outbursts of temper, he was liberal to his friends and just to his foes. Otto was a man of immense energy and ambition, with a high conception of his duties as a sovereign. His reign forms one of the most notable ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... him accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard Poissonniere. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs Elysees with such elegant assurance; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not the full fruition, Hast thou not the full enjoyance Of thy young heart's fond ambition, Free from every feared annoyance Thou hast sighed for truth and beauty, Hast thou failed, then, in thy wooing? Dreamed of some ideal duty, Is there ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... built on a measuring and comparing, on the massing of images together into general ideas; on the abstraction of new notions and images from these; till a new world is built up within, full of desires and hates, ambition, envy, longing, speculation, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... him why he had offered his services to France, and his answer and his compatriots' answer was always the same: "It is to great England we always look to as our saviour, but the German armies are in France, and to meet our enemies on the field of battle was, and always will be, the first ambition of every Czech soldier, for if England says we are a nation, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... Pitt as War Minister during the first phases of the conflict we must remember that the ambition of his life was to be a Peace Minister. Amidst the exhaustion caused by the American War, he deemed it essential to ensure the continuous growth of savings and investments which, under favourable conditions, advance at the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... gentry should recognise him as having measured out ribbons for them from behind the counter; while the youngest was taken from the Grammar-school and sent off, much against his will, to form aristocratic acquaintances at Eton. The great ambition of the Miss Ashtons was to shine in London society. Their father boasted that money could do everything. It enabled him to obtain a handsome house, equipage, and establishment, and then to commence their career in the world ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... peculiar gift of expression both in the spoken and written word. He is literary to his finger tips, in the finest sense of the word, for pure love, his own enjoyment and the pleasure of his friends. There is an ambition for you! With all his genuine modesty (and he is painfully modest) by which the light of his genius is hid under even less than the Scriptural bushel, he has a deep and healthy and honorable respect for fame—not of the cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting appreciation ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... future was secure: it was they who gave me a distaste for my position. I believed in them; I was the dupe of their hollow declamation; they taught me thoughtless contempt, and they gave me the sickly ambition to play the silly part of a man of fine sentiments. I despised the mud. ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... settled on the Cape in 1687. When eleven years old he went to his grandfather Hinckley's, and remained with him until he entered college. Here he imbibed his taste for chronology and his love of books. His grandfather fostered him in his youthful ambition of founding a library, and gave him many from his own collection. During his long life of eighty years Governor Hinckley became thoroughly acquainted with all events of importance that had happened in the new world, and the eager boy was fed and stimulated by companionship with ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... a minute, what are the things of the greatest value in this room? We have an organization, The Northern Nut Growers Association. It did not grow from the earth, there is knowledge of science here, there are doctors' degrees (I wish I had one), there is ambition, honesty, love, pride, and patriotism. Man's knowledge is the key. What he leaves alone or what he destroys. So the greatest value is man's knowledge. After all, the greatest values are the things that come from the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... partings there were all over this fair land of ours, brought about by the ambition of demagogues so few in number that we can count them on ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... in his ears, racking his nerves and brain. He could feel all the agony of his fierce revolting youth. The very torment of it had been a spur to his ambition. He swore (young Tyson was always swearing) that he would raise himself out of all that; he would distinguish himself at any cost. (As a matter of fact the cost was borne by the Baptist minister.) The world (represented then by his ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... must pass through him, and in the absence of that gentleman he became commander. To say that Frank was delighted would but feebly express his feelings; he was proud of the honor, and determined that he would prove himself worthy of it. In fact, he had now reached the height of his ambition, although he had little dreamed that it would come so soon. He asked nothing more. He had worked hard and faithfully ever since he had entered the service, but in receiving the appointment of executive officer he felt ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... most opportunely intervened to check the operations of a syndicate which sought to take undue advantage of the prevailing misery. Under Philippine Commission Acts Nos. 495, 786 and 797, appropriations were made for the purchase of rice for distribution in those provinces where the speculator's ambition had run up the selling-price to an excessive rate. Hitherto the chief supplying-market had been the French East Indies, but the syndicate referred to contrived to close that source to the Government, which, however, succeeded in procuring deliveries from other places. The total amount distributed ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Imagine the grandeur of such attractions available at the court, governments, commands, bishoprics, benefices, court-offices, survivor-ships, pensions, credit, favors of every kind and degree for self and family. All that a country of 25 millions men can offer that is desirable to ambition, to vanity, to interest, is found here collected as in a reservoir. They rush to it and draw from it.—And the more readily because it is an agreeable place, arranged just as they would have it, and purposely to suit the social ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and even was elected into Pop. But I was always unadventurous, and in a way timid. I nurtured a private life of my own on books and talk, and felt that the centre of life had insensibly shifted from home to school. But in and through it all, I never gained any deep patriotism, any unselfish ambition, any visions which could have inspired me to play a noble part in the world. I am sure that was as much the result of my own temperament as of the spirit of the place; but the spirit of the place was potent, and taught me to acquiesce in an ideal of decorum, of subordination, of regular, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of good-a negative gain—but it is the love of, and the actual striving after that which is flatly condemned by God, and is in open rebellion against Him. The centreing of the corrupt heart upon its own corruption. Opposition to the pure will of God. Pride, falseness, unscrupulous ambition. Self-seeking, regardless of the means by which its object is obtained. Luxury, effeminacy, and sensuality. The lusts and fleshly passions. Malice, cruelty, and envy. The greed of gain. The love and thraldom of the world. There it is—the running sore of a suffering race. ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... kinds of people: he had sold ribbons through a dozen States. He never had a moment's doubt of himself. He never hesitated to allow himself any indulgence which would not interfere with business. He had one ambition in life—to marry Miss Mercer and get a share in the house. Miss Mercer was as ugly as a millionaire's tombstone. Mr. Bertie Leon—who, when his moustache was not dyed nor his hair greased, was really quite a handsome fellow—considered that the sacrifice he proposed to make in the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... her simply because she loved him too well and was in the way of his ambition. There was nothing astonishing in his behavior, not even if you consider it in the light of modern times. Men always murder—morally, if not physically—the women who ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... students "laid a wreath of laurel on his bier and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a student all his life long, and when he died he was younger than any of them." Jefferson was in the seventies when he turned back to his early ambition, the foundation of the University of Virginia. The mother of Stanford University was older than Jefferson before she laid down the great work of her life as completed. When the heart is full, it shows ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... with the determination to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and when she realized that, although handsome and imposing, she was not a great beauty according to accepted standards, she philosophically buried this callow ambition and announced, "Very well; I shall be the most intellectual ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... liberty; and having secured it we attained our present eminence, strong in no advantages save those that come from democracy, through which the senate debated, the people ratified, the force under arms showed zeal, and the commanders were fired with ambition. None of these things could be done under a tyranny. For that reason, indeed, the ancient Romans detested it so much as to impose a curse ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... slim middle and picked up his hat. "If they're there yet, I'll get some, sure," he promised. "You just keep the fire going till I come back, and I'll wash the dishes. Here, I'll shut the dawg in the house; he's always plumb crazy with ambition to do just what yuh don't want him to do, and I don't want him following." He smiled upon her again (he was finding that rather easy to do) and closed the door lingeringly behind him. Having never tried to analyze his feelings, he did not wonder why he stepped so softly along the frozen ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... with these energetic fellows. Whenever they had a charge committed to their care, they were eager to get it moving. Ned often had to hold them in check, for fear lest they show too much ambition. ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a morning when the cloud of depression began to lift from his mind. An English packet had arrived, bearing despatches for the Admiral, and, as Watty languidly turned the pages of a late Steel's List, ambition once more awoke on finding his name amongst the promotions. Braced in mind, and roused from his apathy by this unlooked-for good fortune, he turned to other papers brought out by the packet, and waded steadily through the news sheets. There was little at first that interested him. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... training centre. Some of the instructors had seen active service in France, and all were veterans in aviation. Of the pupils a certain number were regular officers, army or navy, but the majority were civilians of promise. The ambition of all was the same, to get into the air as quickly as possible, and to qualify for the coveted wings, which, once obtained, assured their wearer of immediate service, either in France, or with a naval unit. There were ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh |
