GIGA THE MOST EXTENSIVE
COLLECTION OF
QUOTATIONS
ON THE INTERNET
Home
Page
GIGA
Quotes
Biographical
Name Index
Chronological
Name Index
Topic
List
Reading
List
Site
Notes
Crossword
Solver
Anagram
Solver
Subanagram
Solver
LexiThink
Game
Anagram
Game
TOPICS:           A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P    Q    R    S    T    U    V    W    X    Y    Z 
PEOPLE:     #    A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P    Q    R    S    T    U    V    W    X    Y    Z 

AMBITION
 << Prev Page    Displaying page 2 of 8    Next Page >> 
[ Also see Achievement Applause Aspiration Desire Endeavor Enterprise Enthusiasm Expectation Fame Glory Hope Indolence Motive Progress Purpose Reputation Restlessness Success Wishes Youth Zeal ]

It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.
      - William Cobbett

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness. But alas! when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of misery.
      - Charles Caleb Colton

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a mean to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
      - Charles Caleb Colton

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward upon the miseries and credulities of mankind.
      - Joseph Conrad (Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski)

On what strange stuff Ambition feeds!
      - Eliza Cook, Thomas Hood

Ambition aspires to descend.
      - Pierre Corneille

Ambition becomes displeasing when it is once satiated; there is a reaction; and as our spirit, till our last sigh, is always aiming toward some object, it falls back on itself, having nothing else on which to rest; and having reached the summit, it longs to descend.
      - Pierre Corneille

All my ambition is, I own,
  To profit and to please unknown;
    Like streams supplied from springs below,
      Which scatter blessings as they go.
      - Nathaniel Cotton

By low ambition and the thirst of praise.
      - William Cowper, Table Talk (l. 591)

On the summit see,
  The seals of office glitter in his eyes;
    He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels,
      Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
        And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,
          And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.
      - William Cowper, Task (bk. IV, l. 58)

The great refusal.
  [It., Il gran rifiuto.]
      - Dante ("Dante Alighieri"), Inferno
         (canto III, LX),
        supposedly referring to Celestive V, elected Pope in 1294

Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
      - Sir William D'Avenant

Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase
  By eating, and it fears to starve, unless
    It still may feed, and all it sees devour;
      Ambition is not tir'd with toll nor cloy'd with power.
      - Sir William D'Avenant

Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd,
  Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave;
    For though we like it, as a forward child,
      'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.
      - Sir William D'Avenant

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
      - Sir William D'Avenant

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
      - Sir John Denham

But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
  And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
      - John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
         (pt. I, l. 198)

Be nice to people on your way up because you might meet 'em on your way down.
      - Jimmy Durante

If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.
      - Elizabeth I, Worthies of England
         (vol. I, p. 419),
        by Thomas Fuller, (written on window pane under words written by Raleigh)

Most natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually.
      - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
      - Thomas Dunn English

Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far.
      - Euripides

Don't let ambition get so far ahead that it loses sight of the job at hand.
      - William Feather

The tragedy is that so many have ambition and so few have ability.
      - William Feather

Nothing can be more destructive to ambition, and the passion for conquest, than the true system of astronomy. What a poor thing is even the whole globe in comparison of the infinite extent of nature!
      - Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle


Displaying page 2 of 8 for this topic:   << Prev  Next >>  1 [2] 3 4 5 6 7 8

The GIGA name and the GIGA logo are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
GIGA-USA and GIGA-USA.COM are servicemarks of the domain owner.
Copyright © 1999-2018 John C. Shepard. All Rights Reserved.
Last Revised: 2018 December 13




Support GIGA.  Buy something from Amazon.


Click > HERE < to report errors