Ambition Quotes - Page 60

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.

Put aside ambition for public recognition, and simply do what you do because it feels good inside.

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available.

No matter what face he wears, Satan has one overmastering ambition, one burning desire-to dethrone the Almighty and to place himself upon the highest throne of the universe.

It's all about how can you take care of yourself when furthering your life's goals and ambitions, and purpose and whatever you choose - family, career - to maintain a really balanced, whole, healthy outlook.

When I pitched headforemost into the world I landed in the crib of Negroism.

Action often precedes the feeling.

You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

They that soar too high, often fall hard.

We all wind up the same way, no matter what our goals or ambitions are. We have nothing at all to say about how we got into this world or how are going to leave it.

Timothy's great value was that he was always willing to go anywhere; and in his hands a message was as safe as if Paul had delivered it himself. Others might be consumed with selfish ambition; but Timothy's one desire was to serve Paul and Jesus Christ. He is the patron saint of all those who are quite content with the second place, so long as they can serve.

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.

Covetous ambition, thinking all too little which presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in need of that which it hath not.

I have never taken my career seriously. My only ambition was to grow as an actor.

Ambition is not a four-letter word and women have to embrace that.

Here is a fact: nothing in all civilization has been as productive as ludicrous ambition. Whatever its ills, nothing has created more. Cathedrals, sonatas, encyclopedias: love of God was not behind them, nor love of life. But the love of man to be worshiped by man.

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away.

Do not procrastinate. Someone has said that procrastination is the thief of time. Actually, procrastination is much more. It is the thief of our self-respect. It nags at us and spoils our fun. It deprives us of the fullest realization of our ambitions and hopes.

But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.