quotations about ambition
Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.
DAVID HUME
The History of England
I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY
Anne of Avonlea
Say what we will, you may be sure that ambition is an error; its wear and tear of heart are never recompensed, --it steals away the freshness of life, --it deadens its vivid and social enjoyments, --it shuts our souls to our own youth, --and we are old ere we remember that we have made a fever and a labor of our raciest years.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
The Student
Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme, to be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
T. SOUTHERN
attributed, Day's Collacon
The ambitious deceive themselves in proposing an end to their ambition; that end, when attained, becomes a means.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Covetous ambition, thinking all too little which presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in need of that which it hath not.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Self-oriented ambition is not a gift from the Father of lights. It is a bad legacy from the father of lies. We are better off without it.
JOHN KOESSLER
The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap
It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Men climb from one ambition to another.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
Discourses on Livy
Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.
THOMAS OTWAY
attributed, A Dictionary of Thoughts
But unscrupulous ambition has nothing to work upon, save in a nation corrupted by avarice and luxury.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God