Ambition Quotes
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.
Denham
Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
Dryden, John
Accurst ambition, how dearly I have bought you.
English, Thomas
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
Gracian, Baltasar
Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another's fame.
Harvard
O cursed ambition, thou devouring bird, how dost thou from the field of honesty pick every grain of profit or delight, and mock the reaper's toil!
Hoole
Ambition: The glorious frailty of the noble mind.
Johnson, Samuel
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
La Bruyere, Jean
A slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose aide may contribute to the advancement of his fortune.
Landor, Walter S.
Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.
Lubbock, John
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Otway
Ambition is a lust that's never quenched, grows more inflamed, and madder by enjoyment.
Penrose
Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train.
Quarles
Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.
Rowe
No bounds his head long, vast ambition knows.
Shakespeare, William
Vaulting ambition which o'er leaps itself.
Shakespeare, William
'Tis a common proof, that lowliness is Edward Young ambition's ladder, where to the climber upwards turns his face; but when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks into the clouds scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.
Shakespeare, William
Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
Shakespeare, William
Ambition's like a circle on the water, which never ceases to enlarge itself, 'till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
Sheer, Wilbert E
Just as there are three R's there are also three A's of business life. They are: Ability, Ambition, and Attitude. Ability establishes what a worker does and will bring him a paycheck. Ambition determines how much he does and will get him a raise. Attitude guarantees how well he does.
Sheffield
Airy ambition, soaring high.
Southey, Robert
Ambition is an idol, on whose wings Great minds are carried only to extreme; To be sublimely great or to be nothing.
Teckell
Ah! curst ambition! to thy lures we owe, All the great ills that mortals bear below.
Wilde, Oscar
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Willis
What is ambition? 'Tis a glorious cheat. Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly the sapphire walls of heaven.
Winter, William
Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!