Quotes on Ambition

Humanity does not ask to be happy.It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, , but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

My ambition is always to get better and better.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.

Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped toward new ends.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side

This fulfils my ambition. I still have my father's robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid office.

Ambition, and Covetousnesse are Passions that are perpetually incumbent, and pressing.

A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive.

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition.

The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.

I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist…..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure.

My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.

I was lucky to learn early in life that you need money for food and shelter, but there's no ambition in having money in the bank for the sake of it!

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

There has to be a way to redirect employee's driving ambition and to channel it more productively. There is. Create heroes in every role. Make every role, performed at excellence, a respected profession.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for honor.