Learn More About
Ambition
Aim at the sun and you may
not reach it; but your arrow will
fly far higher than if you had
aimed at an object
on a level with yourself.
?F. Hawes
Very few people are ambitious
in the sense of having a specific
image of what they want to
achieve. Most people's sights are
only toward the next run,
the next increment of money.
?Judith M. Bardwick
What I aspired to be and
was not, comforts me.
?Robert Browning
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in
a cage, or squirrels in a chain,
ambitious men still climb and climb,
with great labor, and incessant
anxiety, but never reach the top.
?Robert Burton
The men who succeed are the
efficient few. They are the few
who have the ambition and will
power to develop themselves.
?Herbert N. Casson
Big results require big ambitions.
?James Champy
The noblest spirit is most strongly
attracted by the love of glory.
?Marcus T. Cicero
A noble man compares and estimates
himself by an idea which is higher
than himself; and a mean man, by one
lower than himself. The one produces
aspiration; the other ambition, which
is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
?Joseph Conrad
I had ambition not only to go farther
than any man had ever been before, but as
far as it was possible for a man to go.
?James R. Cook
I want to work with the top people,
because only they have the courage
and the confidence and the risk-
seeking profile that you need.
?Laurel Cutler
At the age of six I wanted to
be a cook. At seven I wanted to
be Napoleon. And my ambition has
been growing steadily ever since.
?Salvador Dali
Intelligence without ambition
is a bird without wings.
?C. Archie Danielson
Ambition is like love,
impatient both of delays and rivals.
?Sir John Denham
Ambition is the germ from which
all growth of nobleness proceeds.
?Thomas Dunn English
Women who seek to be equal
with men lack ambition.
?Timothy Leary
We grow small trying to be great.
?Eli Stanley Jones
Ambition is pitiless.
Any merit that it cannot
use it finds despicable.
?Joseph Joubert
When you go in search of honey
you must expect to be stung by bees.
?Kenneth Kaunda
Ambition never comes to an end.
?Yoshida Kenko
A slave has but one master.
An ambitious man has as
many as there are people who
helped him get his fortune.
?Jean De La Bruyere
Ambition has one heel nailed
in well, though she stretch her
fingers to touch the heavens.
?William Lilly
Most people would succeed
in small things if they were not
troubled with great ambitions.
?Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ambition is so powerful a passion
in the human breast, that however high
we reach we are never satisfied.
?Niccolo Machiavelli
Nature that framed us of four elements,
warring within our breasts for regiment,
doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
?Christopher Marlowe
Ambition is a poor excuse for
not having sense enough to be lazy.
?Charlie McCarthy
Ambition is a lust that is
never quenched, but grows
more inflamed
and madder by enjoyment.
?Thomas Otway
When ambition ends,
happiness begins.
?Hungarian Proverb
Though ambition in itself is a vice,
it often is also the parent of virtue.
?Edgar Quinet
Most people would succeed in
small things if they were not
troubled with great ambitions.
?Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Keep away from people who try
to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that, but
the really great make you feel
that you, too, can become great.
?Mark Twain
Live neither in the past nor in
the future, but let each day's work
absorb your entire energies, and
satisfy your widest ambition.
?Sir William Osler
I had no ambition to make a fortune.
Mere money-making has never been
my goal, I had an ambition to build.
?John D. Rockefeller
Ambition breaks the ties of blood,
and forgets the obligations of gratitude.
?Sir Walter Scott
To be ambitious of true honor,
of the true glory and perfection
of our natures, is the very principle
and incentive of virtue.
?Sir Philip Sidney
Ambition is an idol, on whose
wings great minds are carried
only to extreme; to be sublimely
great or to be nothing.
?Robert Southey
Ambition often puts men upon
doing the meanest offices; so
climbing is performed in the
same position with creeping.
?Jonathan Swift
Where there are large powers
with little ambition... nature may be said to
have fallen short of her purposes.
?Sir Henry Taylor
Oh that I were seated
as high as my ambition,
I'd place my naked foot on
the necks of monarchs.
?Horace Walpole
First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
?Epictetus
