|
|
|
More "Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the expression of an inherently respectful nature. He reverenced his father and loved his father's profession of farmer. His earliest pleasure was to hold the reins and drive "like Colonel Jinks," and his earliest ambition was to become a teamster, that part of the farm work ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... that the Great Powers were at war. After that they got no news at all for more than two months. The windows, not this time of heaven, but of hell, were opened. The fountains of the great deep of human ambition, greed and passion were broken up. Lands where men, unguessing, had bought and sold, married and been given in marriage, were submerged, swamped, desolated. Salissa was a good ark, roomier than ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... was marrying and giving in marriage, it was just as though he had died and gone to heaven. Heaven is the absence of worry and of ambition. Heaven is where you want nothing you haven't got. Heaven is finality. And this was finality. On the September morning, after the honeymoon and the settling down, he arose leisurely, long after his wife, and, putting on the puce dressing-gown ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... of ambition and energy in his son were a grievance to him almost as great as his lack of physical powers, and he saw that although, so far there was still an absence of ambition, yet the boy had gained firmness and decision ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... considerable distance at that time between the warriors and Fred and Terry, who had set out with the ambition to keep up their traveling through the entire night. The Winnebagos did not wait long, when they moved on at ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... a design without a parallel—did require his architect to construct him a tomb, which should put to shame all previous monuments, and should with difficulty be surpassed, or even equalled. He must have possessed much elevation of thought, and an intense ambition, together with inordinate selfishness, an overweening pride, and entire callousness to the sufferings of others, before he could have approved the plan which his master-builder set before him. That plan, including the employment of huge blocks of stone, their conveyance to the top of a hill a ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... with uneasy suspicion, and sheep, seen close at hand, lost all the picturesque quality of a distant flock, and became stupid long-faced creatures, by no means as clean as they might be. Milking-time aroused no ambition to experiment on her own account, and a glass of foaming new milk proved unexpectedly nauseous. Sad as it was to confess it, she infinitely preferred the chalked and watered edition of ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... stridently, we should not have had half so much sport; yet small largess does the miserable minstrel get for tooting tunelessly. Let us honor the brave who fall in the battle of print. 'Twas a noble ambition, after all, which caused our asinine friend to cloak himself in that cast leonine skin. Who would be always reciting from a hornbook to Mistress Minerva? What, I pray you, would become of the corn, if there were no scarecrows? All honor to you, then, my looped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... happy with one as with the other. But Edward felt that he ought to represent the matter in its proper light, and affirmed that every girl anxious to work goes into life handicapped, and that nine times out of ten when a girl marries she reaches the goal of her ambition. In adopting a girl, therefore, while they might contribute much to their own happiness, they could not reasonably hope to enrich the world greatly. On the other hand, from a boy properly selected, carefully reared, and soundly educated, they might with good reason ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... sport hunting them, it's the grizzly that usually does the hunting. For myself, I haven't any ambition that way. I'm perfectly willing to give him his full half of the road whenever we meet. And we won't meet at all, if I see him first. I've had more than one tussle with an old silver-tip, and I've got ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... as to imitate them; for they have indeed laid down such a scheme and foundation of policy, that as men live happily under it, so it is like to be of great continuance; for they having rooted out of the minds of their people all the seeds both of ambition and faction, there is no danger of any commotion at home; which alone has been the ruin of many states, that seemed otherwise to be well secured; but as long as they live in peace at home, and are governed by such good ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... the new periodical,—"shall not be destitute of the manners of a gentleman, nor a stranger to genteel amusements. He shall attend Theatres, Museums, Balls, and whatever polite diversions the town shall furnish." The reader of the "Anthology" will find for his reward an improving discourse on "Ambition," and a commendable schoolboy's "theme" on "Inebriation." He will learn something which may be for his advantage about the "Anjou Cabbage," and may profit by a "Remedy for Asthma." A controversy respecting the merits of Sir Richard Blackmore may prove too little exciting at the present time, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... muscles, but had a vivifying warmth. It made him suspect that his life was becoming cold and self- centred, that he was missing the deepest and best experiences of an existence that was brief indeed at best, and, as he believed, soon ceased forever. The love of study and ambition had sufficed thus far, but actuated by his own materialistic creed he was bound to make the most of life while it lasted. According to Emerson he was as yet but in the earlier stages of evolution, and his highest manhood wholly undeveloped. Had not "music, poetry, and ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... our lives poetically and beautifully described by Moore, as "green spots in memory's waste." Such are the emotions arising from the attainment, after a long pursuit, of any darling object of love or ambition; and although possession and subsequent events may have proved to us that we had overrated our enjoyment, and experience have shown us "that all is vanity," still, recollection dwells with pleasure upon the beating ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... given nor received without a revolution. At last he yielded to the demands of the army and joined the camp at Mevania,[151] where they had taken up their position. A long train of senators followed him, many moved by their ambition, but most by their fears. Here he was still undecided and at the ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... will they not rise again, like an earthly mist? What is Gratitude opposed to Ambition, filial revenge, and Woman's rivalry—what is it but a cruel Curb in the mouth of a fiery Horse, maddening the fierce animal whom it cannot 90 restrain? Forgive me, Earl Henry! I meant not to move you ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... self-knowledge. She was, my dear sir, what you suppose the true woman to be,—a bundle of blind instincts; and among these the strongest was that of property in her husband, and power over him. She had lived in her power over men; it was her field of ambition. She knew them thoroughly. Women are called ivy; and the ivy has a hundred little fingers in every inch of its length, that strike at every flaw and crack and weak place in the strong wall they mean to overgrow; and so had Lillie. She saw, at a glance, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... facing the stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the tortures of kings; so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the Jesuits was the greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition; the greatest career here, and in heaven the surest reward; and began to long for the day, not only when he should enter into the one Church and receive his first communion, but when he might join that wonderful brotherhood, which was present ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Vladimir, it was her love for him that had given her this gift of clear-seeing. Without love she might have allowed herself to be blindfolded as many other women are, by ambition, or money, ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... and solitary he had always been, but now he appeared indifferent to everything which had formerly given him pleasure,—even to those literary studies by means of which he might have hoped to win distinction. To his mother—who thought that marriage might quicken his former ambition, and revive his interest in life—he said that he had made a vow to marry no living woman. And the months ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... once, when she was but a young girl, Margaret Mueller had wonderfully molded arms and shoulders, regular features and enchanting eyes. But that is all the picture shows. In the photograph is no hint of her mellow voice, of her eager expression and of the smoldering fires of passion, ambition and purpose that smoked through those gay, bewitching eyes. The old-fashioned frizzled hair on her forehead, the obvious pose of her hand with its cheap rings, the curious cut of her dress, made after that travesty of the prevailing mode which country ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... "My ambition in life," said the Judge, "is to be the organizer of a lodge without flub-dub, gold tassel uniforms, red tape ritual, a regiment of officers with high-sounding titles, a calisthenic drill of idiotic signs and grips, a goat, and members who call each other ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Hiram's frankness and she smiled on him affectionately. "We're both glad we came to town," she said with a glance at her own fluffy net dress, "but we'll be glad, too, to get back to the folks again. Town's plenty of fun, but it takes one's ambition. Hiram's simply lost without the woods and hills and I'm going to be pretty well satisfied with Rockham, once I ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... could not restrain his Spaniards, he despatched the whole body, 25,000 strong, back to Spain. It was a great deed. It violated all military canons, for by it Wellington divided his army in the presence of the enemy. It involved, too, a rare sacrifice of personal ambition. "If I had 20,000 Spaniards, paid and fed," he wrote to Lord Bathurst, "I should have Bayonne. If I had 40,000 I do not know where I should stop. Now I have both the 20,000 and the 40,000, . . . but if they plunder they will ruin all." Wellington was great enough to sacrifice both ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... and as the northern districts possessed eighty-five of the corps of thousands that had gained laurels in the district exercises, no one doubted that the work of the war would fall upon these alone. Many a young man in the other parts of the country felt in his breast the stirrings of a noble ambition; but there was nowhere manifested a desire to withdraw more labour from the country than was necessary, or to interfere with the rational plan of mobilisation by pushing corps into the foreground from a distance. While the other corps thus voluntarily held back, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... means that the poet, entangled in the dark forest of political anarchy, was driven from the hill of civil order by the Leopard of Pleasure (Florence), the Lion of Ambition (France), and the Wolf of Avarice (Rome), and was by divine grace granted a vision of the three worlds that he might realize what comes after death, and be the more firmly established in the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... indulged, they became stronger and more obdurate as life advanced. Before his elevation to the supreme Bench, he had accumulated a fortune of at least one hundred thousand dollars, which he had judiciously invested in the city of New Orleans. The tenure of his office was for life, and his ambition never aspired to anything beyond; but he devoted himself to the duties of this with the assiduity of one determined, not only to know, but faithfully to discharge them. Judge Martin was conscientious in all that he did ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... not, therefore, touched by the spur of ambition, usually stimulating on such occasions; and yet I ought to stand exculpated from the charge of ungracious or unbecoming indifference to public applause. I did not the less feel gratitude for the public favour, although I did not proclaim it; as the lover who ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a learner's ambition ought to be to speak a foreign language idiomatically, and to pronounce it correctly; and these are the objects which are most carefully provided for in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... cow, scour floors and mend shoes—when we consider all this we are constrained to admit that the 17th October 1826 was a dies nefastus, nor wonder that thirty years later Mrs. Carlyle wrote, "I married for ambition, Carlyle has exceeded all that my wildest hopes ever imagined of him, and I am miserable,"—and to a young friend, "My dear, whatever you do, never marry a ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... 'prefect'), should murmur a 'credo' in favour of his honesty. As to honesty, 'I do believe he's honest;' that is to say, he has acted out no dishonesty as yet, and we have no right to interpret doubtful texts into dishonorable allegations. But for ambition—for ambition! Answer from the depth of your conscience, 'de profundis.' Is he or is he not an ambitious man? Does he or does he not mean in his soul to be Napoleon the Second? Yes, yes—I think, you think, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... with a love which was almost a mania—a love which held him true to it, amidst all the distractions which come to a wealthy and dissipated young man. He had ambition, but his ambition was secondary to his mere abstract joy and interest in everything which concerned the old life and history of the city. He yearned to see this new underworld ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as to how she realized her ambition is very interesting. Going to her private school one morning, she saw a carpenter repairing a building. Upon inquiry she learned that it was to be opened as Colored School Number 2. She went immediately to William D. Wilkins, a member ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... the exiled Dingaan. He was not a person of bellicose disposition, and thinking discretion the better part of valour, was ready enough to swear to keep peace with his late enemies. In these circumstances the Boers with prayer and thanksgiving were able to pursue the promptings of their long-checked ambition. Soon several hundreds of waggons drawn by long teams of oxen came lumbering into Natal, for the purpose of establishing there the Republic, which had so often been planned out in imagination and never yet found any but an ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... who do not wish to see the asylums of Great Britain overcrowded, enact that in such a case the player may take his ball and throw it over his shoulder. The same to count as one stroke. But vaulting ambition is apt to try and drive out from the ditch, thinking thereby to win through without losing a stroke. This way ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the seventh heaven. She had not yet learnt how little even personal liking weighs against ambition when the object of it is unsupported by the merit of being well placed in the world. If well-tochered Lady Geraldine, pale and plain, had married the heir, every door in Bromley Towers would have been hospitably thrown open to her while the loveliest Peri, whose face ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... and their neighbors were thus brought face to face in a manner which admitted of no compromise. The situation naturally seemed rather a simple one to the governor, who was probably ignorant of the intentions and ambition of the Mormons. If he had understood the nature and weight of the objections to them, he would have understood also that he could protect them in their possessions only by maintaining ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... monarch of the world. But I plainly protested that I would never be the means of bringing a free and brave people into slavery; and though the wisest of the Ministers were of my opinion, my open refusal was so opposed to his Majesty's ambition that he could never forgive me. And from this time a plot began between himself and those of his Ministers who were my enemies, that nearly ended ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... is easy to attain a low ideal; consequently, it is easier still to persuade ourselves that we have attained it when we have done nothing of the kind. To take a random example. It might be called a high ambition to wish to be an archangel; the man who entertained such an ideal would very possibly exhibit asceticism, or even frenzy, but not, I think, delusion. He would not think he was an archangel, and go about flapping his hands under the impression that they were ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ambition of Peter for commercial and maritime greatness also to a very humble beginning. Whether it was a youthful sport, subsequently directed into a great enterprise, or the plodding intention to create a navy and open seaports under his own superintendence, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... of the Civil Service, and Lieutenant Anderson, of the 1st Bombay European Fusiliers—and a considerable body of troops. Moolraj, however, had no intention of losing his government, and either prompted by his own ambition, or instigated by evil counsellors, he resolved to rebel. By bribes he won over the native troops who had accompanied the commissioners, and whom, there can be little doubt, he instigated his followers to murder. Both Mr Agnew and ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... unnatural and unworthy members of the human family, but the same red blood pulses in our veins as in yours, fathers, sons, brothers; we are alive to the same impulses, our souls are kindled by the same aspirations as are yours. Why should this, our ambition, be held in leash by the same bond that holds the ignorant, the illiterate, the vicious, the irresponsible in the human economy? What does the idea of government imply? The crystallized sentiments of an intelligent people? Then do we meet it ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... No! no! Ambition holy, high, Urges for more than both to pray; Come in, O gracious force, I cry, O Workman! share my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... concerned, for "Standard Oil," for myself, and for the public; but if the public were not taken care of or were discouraged from participation, then my institution would surely be only another combination of capitalists and I should fail in my ambition. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... alone I might have endured, but added to them were other sources of disquiet, not the least of which being hints from the housekeeper that it was time I began to do something for myself. Youth, pride, and ambition stirred within me, and I actively set about ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... humorous smile, had not changed as the years passed him on from success to success. Mrs. Hitchcock still slurred the present participle and indulged in other idiomatic freedoms that endeared her to Sommers. These two, plainly, were not of the generation that is tainted by ambition. Their story was too well known, from the boarding-house struggle to this sprawling stone house, to be worth the varnishing. Indeed, they would not tolerate any such detractions from their well-earned reputation. The Brome Porters might ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a deficiency of vital force. Moreover he came to his great task tired. His life till he was past fifty was one of defeat. There was the early disappointment and turning back from law practice, the giving up of his youthful ambition for a public career to which he had trained himself passionately by the study of public speaking. Dr. Albert Shaw, who was his fellow student at Johns Hopkins, says that in the University Mr. Wilson was the finest speaker, except possibly the old President of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... virtually take the leadership of Western civilization, and her capital become the centre of the political organization of the new world State. While "world domination" by military means has always proved a dangerous diet for all nations that have eaten of it heretofore, the American form of that ambition would have this great difference from earlier forms—that it would be welcomed instead of being resisted by the dominated. America would have given a new meaning to the term and found a means of satisfying ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... facts of the case. Our defunct sister, whose canonisation the order are now endeavouring to obtain at the court of the Pope, and would have had it if they could have paid the proper costs of the papal brief; this Petronille, then, had an ambition to have her name included in the Calendar of Saints, which was in no way prejudicial to our order. She lived in prayer alone, would remain in ecstasy before the altar of the virgin, which is on the side of the fields, and pretend so ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... as old Handel must have stopped his ears to these very same arguments before, he could not choose but listen, now that they fell from ducal lips. He did not change his mind,—a doctorship of law remained the goal of his ambition,—but he practically acquiesced, and, on his return to Halle, sent his son to study music with Zachau, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... them monthly to Goa, or Nowsaree, is one of the ancient myths of Anglo-India. I do not mean to say that if you encourage your Boy to do this he will refuse; on the contrary, he likes it. But the ordinary Boy, I believe, is not a prey to ambition and, if he can find service to his mind, easily reconciles himself to living on his wages, or, as he terms it, in the practical spirit of oriental imagery, "eating" them. The conditions he values seem to be,— permanence, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... it; here vaultin ambition o'er-leaped herself. Hed I sed "Saulsbury," it mite have ansered, but to give Sumner's name for a drink uv gin wuz a peece uv lunacy for wich I kan't account. I wuz ignominiously kicked into the street. Drinks obtained at the expense uv bein kicked is cheep, but I don't want em on them terms; ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the shark got after me." And, forthwith, he gave a thrilling account of his adventure, adding something to it after the manner of storytellers, and throwing in a description of his past life and present ambition. To all of which the Crab listened with ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... only protection against the drizzling rain; and the sole suggestions of comfort were the sickly fires that patient endeavor had managed to coax into life in these retreats. Some, whom exhaustion had robbed even of a fire-tender's ambition, had dropped down on the very spot where they had slipped from their saddles, and slept, cloak-wrapped, in the wet. And the circles about the fires were not ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of Homer, had sung to the early Greeks the fall of Troy or the labors of Hercules, his work (taking the place which those of Homer have unfortunately occupied) as a splendid model for all succeeding ages, would have given a very different turn to the pursuits of heroes and the policy of nations. Ambition might then have become a useful passion, instead of a ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... to be considered a strict-living man, and he had a great deal of trouble, as we shall see, with the tumultuous ambition of his sons; but he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rognwald and others, in a large, quietly potent, and successful manner; and it lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... very active, and he never asked a hand. "He told me," adds my companion, "that some time we would go to the Alps together;" and the man turns to me as we work onward, and questions me about those mountains. That is his ambition now,—to visit Switzerland and the rivals of his ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... and regular farmer, the shooting of the corn in the still nights, as it swells with a respiring movement, distending the contracted sheaves which enclose it. In addition to this antipathy to the pursuits of his ancestors, Mark had a decided desire, a restless ambition, prompting him to see, and seek, and mingle with the world. He was fond, as our readers may have observed already, of his own eloquence, and having worn out the patience and forfeited the attention of all auditors at home, he was compelled, in order to the due appreciation of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... eighty-five, he began the history of his royal comrade, St. Louis, than the hope of literary fame. He would have scouted it. That kind of fame might have been good enough for monks and abbots, but it would never at that time have roused the ambition of a man of Joinville's stamp. How the book came to be written he tells us himself in his dedication, dated in the year 1309, and addressed to Louis le Hutin, then only King of Navarre and Count of Champagne, but afterwards King of France. His mother, Jeanne ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... and it was becoming more and more the custom to engage Dr. Mahony months ahead, thus binding him fast. And though he would sometimes give Mary a fright by vowing that he was going to "throw up mid. and be done with it," yet her ambition—and what an ambitious wife she was, no one but himself knew—that he should some day become one of the leading specialists on Ballarat, seemed not unlikely of fulfilment. If his health kept good. And ... and if he could possibly ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... army of 100,000 well-trained and acclimated troops ready to march or sail where he wist, Toussaint refrained from raising the standard of liberty in any one of the neighboring island, at a time when, had he been fired with what men term ambition, he could easily have revolutionized the entire archipelago of the west. But his thoughts were bent on conquest of another kind; he was determined to overthrow an error which designing and interested men had craftily instilled into the civilized ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... for her child, her ferocity and her cunning, we have a hideous picture of corrupted womanhood. We cannot but wonder whether, in after days, remorse ever did its merciful work upon Herodias. She urged Herod to his ruin at last by her ambition, which sought for him the title of king, and, with one redeeming touch of faithfulness, went with him into dreary exile in Gaul. Perhaps there, among strangers, and surrounded by the wreck of her projects, and when the hot ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... assiduous attention to the classes of Professor Sumner had not gone unnoticed by that eminent instructor, who once called him by name in Chapel Street, much to Dan's edification. He thought well of belles-lettres and for a time toyed with an ambition to enrich English literature with contributions of his own. During this period he contributed to the "Lit" a sonnet called ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... experience and insight, thought Vavasor, who would have her learn to look on the world and its affairs as they saw them who by long practice had disqualified themselves for seeing them in any other than the artificial light of fashion. Thus early did Vavasor conceive the ambition of having a hand in the worldly education of this young woman, such a hand that by his means she should come to shine as she deserved in the only circle in which he thought shining worth any one's while; his reward should be to see her so shine. Through his aunt he could gain ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... language produced an instantaneous effect. The estates knew that they were dealing with a man whose life was governed by lofty principles, and they felt that they were in danger of losing him through their own selfishness and low ambition. They were embarrassed, for they did not like to, relinquish the authority which they had begun to relish, nor to accept the resignation of a man who was indispensable. They felt that to give up William of Orange at that time was to accept the Spanish yoke for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... quick to recover. "I'll tell you all about it, Mrs. Pitman," he said smilingly. "You see, all my life, I have wished for an onyx clock. It has been my ambition, my Great Desire. Leaving the house that Sunday morning, and hearing the ticking of the clock up-stairs, I recognized that it was an onyx clock, clambered from my boat through an upper window, and so reached it. ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... children's children (here he glanced at Loo and her troop), to bear witness to them that you nobly did your duty in driving that great iron horse, whereof this little silver pony is a model and a memorial. To perform one's duty well in this life is the highest ambition that any man can have in regard to temporal things. Nelson, our greatest naval hero, aimed at it, and, on the glorious day of Trafalgar, signalled that England expected every man to do it. Wellington, our greatest soldier, made duty his guiding-star. The effectual ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the interested stranger, good humoredly, as she always smiled. She was feeling very tired after her day's exertions, but happily content with her first efforts to realize her ambition,—to have "some place for herself." What she meant by having a place for herself in the world she did not yet understand of course. Nor what she could do with it, having achieved it. It was an instinct, blind in the manner of instincts, of her dependent womanhood. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... world could be so wise as to imitate them; for they have, indeed, laid down such a scheme and foundation of policy, that as men live happily under it, so it is like to be of great continuance; for they having rooted out of the minds of their people all the seeds, both of ambition and faction, there is no danger of any commotions at home; which alone has been the ruin of many states that seemed otherwise to be well secured; but as long as they live in peace at home, and are governed by such good laws, the envy of ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... be sent back to Africa, just at the time when his intelligent and practical instruction in the latest grand manoeuvres had drawn all eyes upon him, would compromise, by an untimely retirement, the advantages of this new office, the object of his ambition. ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... everything, 125 To make our former pleasures all seem stale. This, or some tyrannous single thought, some fit Of passion, which subdues our souls to it, Till for its sake alone we live and move— Call it ambition, or remorse, or love— 130 This too can change us wholly, and make seem All which we did before, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... unworthy in Marsh to disfigure his fine work on the English language by traducing all who now write that tongue. "None seek the audience, fit, though few, which contented the ambition of Milton, and all writers for the press now measure their glory by their gains," and so indefinitely onward,—which is simply cant. Does Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., who honestly earns his annual five thousand dollars from the "New York Ledger," take rank as head of American ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... of his tribe he suffered no detail, however trivial, to escape its jotting down. To familiarize himself with the goings and comings of one young woman, he made the acquaintance of an entire town. He knew Jasper Grierson's ambition, and its fruitage in the practical ownership of Wahaska. He knew that Edward Raymer had borrowed money from Grierson's bank—and was likely to be unable to pay it when his notes fell due. He had heard it whispered that there ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... the sort," snapped Mamma, "but I have some ambition, otherwise what would have been the good of coming to Europe? And if one gets opportunities, it would be sinful to neglect them. Only—one wants to be sure that one ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... there so much tried, substantial merit. A man of genius, who associated with them in his youth, rendered them this homage: many among them are men possessing "the most amiable characters and minds of the highest order."[3331] Indeed, for most of them, military service was not a career of ambition, but an obligation of birth. It was the rule in each noble family for the eldest son to enter the army, and advancement was of but little consequence. He discharged the debt of his rank; this sufficed for him, and, after twenty ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... country where the ambition and energies of man have been roused to such an extent, the great point is to find out worthy incitements for ambition to feed upon. A virtue undirected into a wrong channel may, by circumstances, prove little better than (even if it does not sink down into) ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... nook of earth was Paradise, and sorrow, the universal lot, was banished from our door. The tales which I had been accustomed to hear of the world's deceit and falsehood seemed groundless and cruel—the inventions of envious disappointed minds—whose ambition had betrayed them into hopes, too preposterous for fulfilment Happiness was on earth—did I not find her in my daily walk?—for such as were not loth to greet her with a lowly and contented spirit. I had no present care. The days were prosperous. I obtained a scholarship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... Jack," said Will Law, soberly. "I care most to see you settled in some decent way of living. What will your mother say, if we but go on gaming and roistering, with dangers of some sudden quarrel—as this which has already sprung up—with no given aim in life, with nothing certain for an ambition—" ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... them in 1707. In them we admire the beauty and fruitfulness of the author's genius, and still much more the great sentiments of virtue which they contain, especially concerning temptations, vain-glory, ambition, the sweetness of God's service, and his holy commandments; the obligation without bounds which all men have of loving God, the incomprehensible advantages of praising him, the necessity of continually advancing in fervor, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... yet give her an opportunity to reject him. And now he was dead, and she was held up to the world as the conceited plaything of a fine gentleman's masquerading sport. That her father's cupidity and ambition made him sanction the imposture, in her bitterness she never doubted. No! Lover, friend, father—all had been false to her, and the only kindness she had received was from the men she had wantonly insulted. Poor little Blossom! indeed, a most premature Blossom; I fear a most unthankful ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... power (Cicer. 5, Tusc.) Thus did I too learn by constant experience, I who had been exalted from the condition of a poor monk to the dignity of an abbot, that my wretchedness increased with my wealth; and I would that the ambition of those who voluntarily seek such power might be curbed by ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... tongue thy glory rings, A scion of a line of kings, True to thy vows, of noblest race, With every gentle gift and grace: Whose tender heart for woe can feel, And joy in every creature's weal: Whose breast with high ambition swells, Knows duty's claim and ne'er rebels. They praise thy valour, patience, ruth, Thy firmness, self-restraint, and truth: Thy hand prepared for sin's control, All virtues of a princely soul. I thought of all these gifts of thine, And glories of an ancient line, I set my ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... passion was ambition, if anything in a nature so contracted could be said to assume the proportions of a fullblown passion. He had a marvellous capacity for dealing with small things, and all that came under his ken he studied to the minutest detail. He ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Rome, Piso,' said Aurelian, 'owe much to Fronto. I confess that his spirit now possesses me. He has roused the latent piety into action and life, which I received with my mother's milk, but which, the gods forgive me! carried away by ambition, had well nigh gone quite out in my soul. My mother—dost thou know it?—was a priestess of Apollo, and never did god or goddess so work by unseen influence to gain a mortal's heart, as did she to ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... have had my share in that mighty action, than be free from my wounds this minute without having been present at it. Those the soldier shows on his face and breast are stars that direct others to the heaven of honour and ambition of merited praise; and moreover it is to be observed that it is not with grey hairs that one writes, but with the understanding, and that commonly improves with years. I take it amiss, too, that he calls ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... successful business not the result of chance. Failure not caused by luck. The intense desire that is necessary to make a business a success. Those that achieve permanent success deserve it. The man that is able to skilfully manage his business. How to realize your ambition. The successful business attitude. Your opinion should be as good as any one else. How many ruin their judgment. The man that gets the best results. A successful business not hard to build up; may be built ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... only exhibit to him the diplomas which I already possess, but also to furnish him with a prophetic vision of those which I may, without undue presumption, hope for, as not beyond the reach of human ambition and attainment. And I am the rather induced to this from the fact that my name has been unaccountably dropped from the last triennial catalogue of our beloved Alma Mater. Whether this is to be attributed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... excitement of places noisy with machinery and wretched with the enslaved poor. Such places as Chichester may indeed stand for England in a way that Manchester, for instance, with its cosmopolitan population and egotistical ambition, its greed, its helplessness, and appalling intellectual mongrelism and parvenu and international society, can never hope to do. England truly remains herself, the England of my heart, because of such places as Chichester, ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... I have to some of the Great Men of your Nation, particularly to your Lordship, gives me an Ambition of making my Acknowledgements by all the Opportunities I can; and such humble Fruits as my Industry produces I lay at your Lordship's Feet. This is a true Story, of a Man Gallant enough to merit your Protection, and, had he always been so Fortunate, he had not made so Inglorious an end: The Royal ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... that an alliance had been arranged between the heir to the Wharton title and property and the daughter of the present baronet. I think that this had probably originated in the club gossip. I trust it did not spring directly from the activity or ambition ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... under this great charter, set out upon the career of a nation, properly aspiring to become of the first among the powers of the earth, and succeeding in the higher sense in this ambition, it yet remains to be told how near our Republic came, in time, to the brink of that engulfing chasm which in past ages has swallowed up other nations for their wicked oppression ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... strongly marked individual life, constant mutual stimulus to mental growth there must have been between these two. We were inclined to think, from the exquisitely phrased sentences and rare fancies in the letters, and from the graceful movement of some of the little poems, that Esther must have had ambition as a writer. Then, again, she seemed so wholly, simply, passionately, a woman, to love and be loved, that all thought of anything else in her nature or her life ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... occupied the throne at the coming of the Spaniards, led his armies across the terrible desert of Atacama, and, penetrating to the southern region of Chili, fixed the permanent boundary of his dominions at the river Maule. His son, Huayna Capac, possessed of ambition and military talent fully equal to his father's, marched along the Cordillera towards the north, and, pushing his conquests across the equator, added the powerful kingdom of Quito to the empire ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... behind Mark, trying to take in what had happened. There was Mrs. Featherstone struggling to conceal her chagrin and dismay at the sudden downfall of her dramatic ambition; Mark standing apart with bent head and hands behind him like a man facing a firing party; Mabel struck speechless and motionless by the shock; and Caffyn with the air of one who has fulfilled an unpalatable duty. Vincent knew it ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... had fallen in Spain), who had held the offices of military tribune and aedile, came forward to solicit it. It is incredible that the Roman senate should have left to accident an election of such importance in this meeting of the Comitia which it had itself suggested, and equally incredible that ambition and patriotism should have so died out in Rome that no tried officer presented himself for the important post. If on the other hand the eyes of the senate turned to the young, talented, and experienced officer, who had brilliantly distinguished himself in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... her clear brunette complexion, suggested a nature that was not cold and unresponsive, yet many who would gladly have won the heiress for her own sake found her as elusive as only a woman of perfect tact and self-possession can be. She had no vulgar ambition to count her victims who had committed themselves in words. With her keen intuition and abundant experience she recognized the first glance that was warmer than mere friendliness, and this was all the committal ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the plot is that the sweet minstrel, love, comes once; and if not frankly and honestly received, he goes away; and may never come again. Another is, that true love is willing to sacrifice itself in order that its ideal may achieve its high ambition. ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... disappointed in those wants, ahungered, athirst, and desperate as famished animals. I saw what taught my brain a new lesson, and filled my breast with fresh feelings. I have no intention to profess more softness or sentiment than I have hitherto professed; mutiny and ambition I regard as I have always regarded them. I should resist a riotous mob just as heretofore; I should open on the scent of a runaway ringleader as eagerly as ever, and run him down as relentlessly, and follow him up to condign punishment as rigorously; but I should do it now chiefly for ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... (1740-1795) we have another extraordinary figure,—a shallow little Scotch barrister, who trots about like a dog at the heels of his big master, frantic at a caress and groveling at a cuff, and abundantly contented if only he can be near him and record his oracles. All his life long Boswell's one ambition seems to have been to shine in the reflected glory of great men, and his chief task to record their sayings and doings. When he came to London, at twenty-two years of age, Johnson, then at the beginning of ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... person I know of in the world who sleeps with a noble air is Agamemnon, whom Guerin has represented lying on his bed at the moment when Clytemnestra, urged by Egisthus, advances to slay him. Moreover, I have always had an ambition to hold myself on my pillow as the king of kings Agamemnon holds himself, from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... day, when personal ambition takes the place of patriotism, and love of principle gives way to love of party; when the success of the latter is placed above constitutional obligations and popular rights, one seems, as he turns back to our early history, to be transported to another age ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... he had begun to wonder—in his peculiarly indefinite way he had begun to doubt his own philosophy. Was the void in his soul a product of thwarted ambition?—for, whilst he slaved, scrupulously, upon "Martin Zeda," he loathed every deed and every word of that Old Man of the Sea. Or could it be that his own being—his nature of Adam—lacked something which wealth, social position, and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... personally, for this matter deeply concerns your future happiness. I can not call; I have been ordered out of your husband's house. It lies in your power to influence Warrington to drop his political ambition. Information has come to my hand that would not look very well in the newspapers. It is in my power to stop it, but I promise not to lift ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... heart as a talisman. Lafayette, who had been arrested in France by order of the Government, which was opposed to his expedition, soon came and joined us after escaping from prison. I had had time to make my preparations, and I sailed full of melancholy, ambition, and hope. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to interfere are not always able to resist the counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... know, and you may not,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... assuming administrative power, Yoshimune gave earnest thought to reform of the currency. His ambition was to restore the gold and silver coins to the quality and sizes existing in the Keicho era. This he effected, though not on a sufficiently large scale. Each of the new coins was equal in intrinsic value ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... this may sound foolish to you, but he will. How do I know? I feel it; I don't know why, but I do. And we are to leave the old home if father can sell the land. It's better to go, but it will be still better to come back, and we will. Do you think that I am merely a simple girl without ambition? I ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... his attempt to conquer the world!" On his inquiring "Mother, why, what am I doing; and what has Vikram done?" " Thou, my boy," she replied, "throwing away the outside of the cake eatest the middle only. Vikram also in his ambition, without subduing the frontiers before attacking the towns, invades the heart of the country and lays it waste. On that account, both the townspeople and others rising, close upon him from the frontiers to the centre, and destroy his army. That ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... her interest in the mill-workers. His own schemes involved a complete readjustment of the relation between the company and the hands: the suppression of the obsolete company "store" and tenements, which had so long sapped the thrift and ambition of the workers; the transformation of the Hopewood grounds into a park and athletic field, and the division of its remaining acres into building lots for the mill-hands; the establishing of a library, a dispensary ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... to the greatest shame of humanity. Every new day brings new horrible proofs of the cruelty and the vandalism of the Germans in the bloody clash of nations which we are witnessing, in that neutral slaughtering of brothers provoked by the madness of these same Germans; in their vainglorious ambition to rule the world with violence, they are throwing upon the scales of the world's justice nothing but the sword. We fancy that Germany, oblivious of her past fame, has turned to the altars of her cruel national ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... England and now the English were eager to go out and themselves become conquerors, and to further that ambition King Edward and his army set out and ravaged Normandy, pillaging and plundering their way almost to the gates of Paris, and their march was perfectly consistent with the feudal manner of waging war, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... on principle, seeking to raise it; refusing by word or deed to truckle to the false, the base, or the lawless in your art, or to act against the acknowledged canons of good taste. Not for a moment should ambition be checked, but it should always be accompanied by the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the French intended to concentrate in the Vosges, as next door to Champagne; so they carted all their poison gases there and to Ypres, where their ambition still maintains ascendency over their good sense. But where the Germans think Joffre is likely to strike is usually the place furthest from his thoughts. Activities in the Arras sector were begun under ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as a low fellow, both in breeding and circumstances; nevertheless, I found a few individuals of moderate fortune, who gladly adopted my stile of living; and many others would have acceded to our society, had they not been prevented by the pride, envy, and ambition of their wives and daughters. — Those, in times of luxury and dissipation, are the rocks upon which all the small estates in the country ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... experience has only confirmed my views, that the world as it has become under the pressure of high civilisation is a world for the rich. Leaving material comforts and advantages out of the question, what ambition can a man satisfy without money? Take the successful politicians for instance, and it will be found that almost every one of them is rich. This country is too full; there is scant room for the individual. Only intellectual Titans can force their heads above the crowd, and, as a rule, they have ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... and in doing it my constant thought was that you would come here ... and stay for as long, at least, as we must be together to put your writings into systematic shape to go down to posterity. I have no writings to go down, so my ambition is not for myself, but is for the one by the side of whom I have wrought these forty years, and to get whose speeches before audiences ... has been ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... favour of Coke Clifton; but then it has generally been either from persons whose good word was in my opinion no praise, or from others who evidently meant to be civil to me, or to the family, by speaking well of my brother. I believe him to have much pride, some ambition, a high sense of fashionable honour; that he spurns at threats, disdains reproof, and that he does not want generosity, or those accomplishments which would make him pass with the world for a man whose alliance would ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... that of their aisles, and to lengthen the chancel eastwards, while bringing its western portion into the nave. The tower and north aisle were built on the intended scale; and, when the tower had risen to a certain height, the ambition of the builders was fired to add to it an extra stage, hitherto uncontemplated, below the spire with which it was to be crowned. This project of giving their church a tower and stone spire, which remained, for many years, the ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... came down upon him with a vengeance: Where there is money more is wanted. Ambition is insatiable. Fernanda was very proud, and she would never stand being outdone in show by any other girl in Lancia. Now if Don Santos chose a wife in the town she would find her such a formidable rival that it would be a continual annoyance to her. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... So that it was only for the structure of his own pieces that he had no thought to spare? This he left to the dominion of chance, which blew together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... fault arises from his desire to be thought a fine writer. Without making long extracts, it is impossible to give any conception of the absurdities into which this childish ambition has led him. The tropes and metaphors, the tawdry tinsel, the common tricks of feeble rhetoricians are reproduced here as if they were the highest results of rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her lofty lineaments ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... do we make of the Federal Government a veritable temple of discord. We subject it to the danger of perpetual convulsions, without the power to protect itself except by the repetition of sanguinary wars, whenever the caprice or ambition of any State might lead her into the experiment of rebellion. Between these two unreasonable and contradictory alternatives—the right of the Government to change its forms, and the right of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in Parliament, Is fat and passing wealthy; And surely he should be content With these and being healthy: But Great Ambition will misrule Men at all risks to sally,— Now makes a poet—now a fool, And we ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... like Paris and Rome there is another class of the expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a moment of pique after the failure of some social or political ambition; and who find in these centres the recognition refused them at home and for which their ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... suburban householder who sees a flower emerging from the soil in which he has inserted a packet of guaranteed seeds, and you will have some faint conception how Elizabeth felt as those golden words proceeded from that editor's lips. For the moment Ambition was sated. The years, rolling by, might perchance open out other vistas; but for the moment she ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... pressed against the elder girl's shoulder. But when she went downstairs, and took her place in the class, and found that, after all, she was not such an ignoramus as her companions evidently expected to find her, her spirits rose, and for the first time in her existence a sense of ambition awoke within her. It would be something to conquer Lucy Merriman—the proud, the disdainful, the unpleasant Lucy. After what Professor Merriman had said, Irene made up her mind to say nothing more in public against Lucy; but her real ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... happy Hour, I on the water Of Mannaers mild, the Huntsman will be Madog bold of pleasing Countenance, Of the true Lineage of Owen Gwyned. He covettd not Land, his Ambition was, Not great Wealth, but ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... of recent memory—the air full of its reverberation, and great movement. There was a tradition to be maintained; the sword by no means resting in its sheath. The age was still fitted to evoke a generous ambition; and this son, from whose natural gifts there was so much to hope for, might play his part, at least as a diplomatist, if the present quiet continued. Had not the learned man said that his natural disposition would lead ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... "she was very sensitive to any criticism based on a misconception or a perversion of her purpose, never, in all my intercourse with her, did I discover the slightest evidence of a spirit of literary pique, or pride, or ambition." ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... melancholy, of morbid desires, endless compassion, passionate envy. An epileptic genius whose very exterior speaks of the stream of mildness that fills his heart, of the wave of almost insane perspicuity that gets into his head, finally the ambition, the greatness of endeavour, and the envy that small-mindedness begets.... His heroes are not only poor and crave sympathy, but are half imbeciles, sensitive creatures, noble drabs, often victims ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... for declamation exert in moulding the ideas and opinions of the young, it has been my aim to admit only such productions as inculcate the noblest and purest sentiments, teaching patriotism, loyalty, and justice, and bring the youthful heart with ambition to be useful, and with heroic ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... spirited and obliging young fellow, Richard did all these things very engagingly, and somehow contrived not to spoil himself. He emerged from the war with a Military Cross, a row of service medals, a brace of foreign decorations and an ambition to do some work. His father appeared to applaud the ambition but actually discouraged it with specious argument and an introduction to ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... only pretended overtures to that power. He intended to attack the Spanish monarchy at the source of its greatness, in the West Indies; and by a combination of forces on the Continent to wrest the Palatinate from it, and thereby to destroy the position which it had won on the Middle Rhine. A strange ambition, although in keeping with the age and with his personal character, appears to have been connected with this design. It had entered into his head to marry his daughter to the Electoral Prince Palatine, and perhaps to give his daughter the appearance ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... close, that one miscarrying would leave little doubt of the Fate of all the rest. This in the Camp we commonly call the Park; and here it was that our new Guest, like another Phaeton, though under Pretence of Weariness, not Ambition, got Leave of the very last Carter to the Train to take a Nap in his Waggon. One who had entertain'd a Jealousy of him, and had watch'd him, gave Information against him; upon which he was seiz'd and brought to me as ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... Major Bustead, the Senior Major of the Battalion, and President of the mess, an eastern Canadian, with no military experience whatever, but with abounding energy and ambition; the close friend and boon companion of Colonel Leighton, he naturally had become his second in command. Barry was especially delighted to observe Major Bayne, whom he had not seen since his first meeting with him some months ago on the Red ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... well. Let us go back to my book. Perhaps I shall get on better with it now you are here to help me. My ambition to make a name in the world has never taken so strong a hold on me (I don't know why, unless other disappointments have had something to do with it) as at this time, when I find I can't give my mind to my work. We will make a last effort together, my friend! ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... ultimately reached. He smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too; but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him,—that ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in such a pool that I make my last cast for salmon in this delectable valley, and it fully satisfies my chief ambition of this ten days' fishing; humble enough in all conscience, being nothing higher than to finish up knowing that I have not once returned at night with an empty bag. Even that is something, and it is something done. In the last two hours I get a 12-lb. salmon, a 2-lb. sea trout, and a leash of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... were clustered around their names; they had fought many a bloody battle, and had never turned their backs to the foe; their leader was chosen from their own ranks, and no nobility controlled their ambition or prevented them from receiving the honor due to enterprise and valor; they held the sultan in check; the ulemas gave sanction to their laws, and they in turn sustained the authority of the ulemas with their swords. As long as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... true," cried Ned. "You see, the fellow is a bounder. He started manufacturing on practically nothing, not knowing very much about it. That's why he's got into this hole. You see, he's no conscience, and his ambition oversteps everything. You should have heard him last Sunday morning haranguing his followers, as I was coming home from church. You would realise, then, what kind of a fellow he is—just a blank, blatant atheist, and, as your father has always maintained, a man who has given up faith in religion ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... merit his esteem is the fondest wish of my heart—to be your slave, the proudest aim of my ambition. ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... But this was going too far, even for a friend of Essex. To grant such a request might have got the College into trouble with the influential Warwickshire family of Arden, and so it was refused; but the grant was "recognized," and Shakespeare's peculiar ambition was satisfied. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... ultimately brought about the downfall of Chrysostom, who died deposed and in exile, 404. No controversies of the ancient Church are less attractive than the Origenistic, in which so much personal rancor, selfish ambition, mean intrigue, and so little profound thought were involved. The ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... believe, dear reader, that whatever after influences may have exercised dominion over his heart; however he may have been swerved from his plighted faith by dreams of worldly ambition, or wealth, or power; however cold policy may have up-rooted all finer feeling from his soul, we will believe that no thoughts of treachery, no meditated falsehood mingled with that parting embrace and blessing; that although ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... over bearing prig, showing off his learning at every available chance, and making himself detestable, and everybody else miserable, by his conceited air, but a modest, quiet scholar, with plenty of hidden fire and ambition, and not presuming on his talents to scorn his humble origin, or be ashamed of his home and parents—on the contrary, connecting them with all his dearest hopes of success and advancement ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... realities. I meditated long about myself, debating what I could do after a blow like this which had mown down every flower of my soul. I resolved to rush into the science of politics, into the labyrinth of ambition, to cast woman from my life and to make myself a statesman, cold and passionless, and so remain true to the saint I loved. My thoughts wandered into far-off regions while my eyes were fastened on the splendid tapestry of the yellowing oaks, the stern summits, the bronzed ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... cedars through which our road lay, I fancied I saw the great elms of Newtown, the wide, straight street, the familiar house, an open door, and—ah! It wasn't the first time I had been taken in at that door, the survivor of wrecked ambition and misguided hope, only to hear my shortcomings made tenderly light of, my most desperate follies lovingly ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... was now approaching for the fulfilment of his heart's ambition, but there is still one small incident to relate before we leave our hero. One day, while he was still on the farm, he was passed by a Kaffir, whom he questioned as to his destination. The native replied that he was on his way to Pretoria, and the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... her heart. She had ambition, though it was unknown to them. None of the young Eskimos entirely pleased her. Some one with better looks and more supplies than they must offer himself before she decided to take ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... in his office. But the Duchess, with the mild firmness and conscientious fidelity which ruled her conduct, declared that as she was perfectly satisfied with the tutor who had originally been appointed (when the appointment was less calculated to offer temptations to personal ambition and political intrigue), she did not see that any change was advisable. If a clergyman of higher rank was necessary, there was room for the promotion of Dr. Davys. Accordingly he ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... should be on every drawing-room table," and she almost laughed outright. She thought of a number of other little things that might be said, of the same nature and equally amusing. Her anger flamed up again at the thought of how Janet had concealed this ambition from her, had made her, in a way, the victim of it. It was not fair—not fair! She could have prepared herself against it; she might have got her book ready sooner, and its triumphant editions might at least have come out side by side with ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... miles away from Slow Down Ranch and Tralee, there lived a herd of wild ponies, and it had been the ambition of a dozen ranchmen and broncho-busters thereabouts to capture one or many. More than once Orlando had seen a little gray broncho, with legs like the wrists of a lady, with a tail like a comet, frisking among the rocks and the brushwood, or standing alert, moveless and alone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... But she was by no means overpowered. She was dashed, but not despairing. Of course, she had not expected to launch into such a reckless piece of expenditure all at once, she had only thought she might attain her modest ambition in the due course of time, and she thought so yet. She crammed bills and bank-note back into the purse with serene cheerfulness and shut it with a little snap ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Huayna Capac. This division of the Incarial Empire, was not at all to the liking of either Huascar or Atahualpa. They both wished to be sole Inca. Civil war was the result. Atahualpa, by treachery, had taken his brother prisoner, and would doubtless have achieved his ambition, but just then Pizarro invaded the country, and the reign of the Incas ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... him. All were hostile except Pere Michel, who alone looked at him without hate. The priest showed the same mild serenity which had always distinguished him. He seemed like one who had overcome the world, who had conquered worldly ambition and worldly passion, and had passed beyond ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... more than half the globe, and sees Mankind grown thin by his destructive sword: Should he go farther, numbers would be wanting To form new battles, and support his crimes. Ye gods, what havoc does ambition ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... smiled at the notion, said that it was inconsistent with his natural character, and that it implied foresight and dexterity beyond what any mortal is endowed with. I think so too; but nevertheless, I was long and long ago aware that he cherished a very high ambition, and that, though he might not anticipate the highest things, he cared very little about inferior objects. Then as to plans, I do not think that he had any definite ones; but there was in him a subtle faculty, a real instinct, that taught him what was good for him,—that is to say, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bannisters, which he is supposed to scratch upon every wall and every wainscot,) and wrapt up so close in melancholy pensiveness, as not even to observe the dog that is flying at him. Behind him, and in the inner room, are two persons maddened with ambition. These men, though under the influence of the same passion, are actuated by different notions; one is for the papal dignity, the other for regal; one imagines himself the Pope, and saying mass; the other fancies himself a King, is encircled with the emblem of royalty, and is casting contempt ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Carthage {33}, Rome was fundamentally changed; but the armies still continued to act. Their ambition was now strengthened by avarice, and became ten times more active and dangerous to other nations. They then carried on war in every direction, and neither the riches of the East, nor the poverty of the North, could ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... pure was the ambition of Sir Samuel Romilly we may learn from the following beautiful passages, where he has explained the motives by which he was actuated in his proposed reforms of the criminal law. "It was not," said he, "from light motives—-it was from no fanciful notions of benevolence, that I have ventured to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... be admitted that it was bad character, cold, hostile, inquisitorial, with a sinister lowering of one eyebrow and a merciless hardness about the corners of the mouth. One might have imagined histories about her by the hour, histories in which unworthy ambition, the desire for money, and an entire absence of all decent feeling would play ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... in the great world of America, my ambition was to secure a professorial chair. That any man having the slightest tinge of color, nay, without tinge of color, with only a drop of African blood in his veins, let his accomplishments be what they may, should aspire to such a position, I soon found was the very madness ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... no ambition except to get out of it and to remain a private while in it. His ambition for his civil career was tremendous. He tried to prod the placid John (his neighbour in their hut) into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... commanded to his mother's chamber so soon as he had come out from his converse with the Squire. There befell an anxious interview, Mistress Fitzooth arguing for and against the Squire's project in a breath. Robin was perplexed indeed: his ambition was fired by the Squire's rosy pictures of what he, as a true Montfichet, must adhere to without fail upon assuming the name and ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... aged millionaire with his youthful stenographer, and the consequent alarms of his household; or the alliance of some scion of a wealthy house with a trained nurse of obscure lineage and vaulting ambition. I am all alone in the world, and though my father, who died when he was only five and twenty, left me but the barest support, I have gloried in my independence and ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... our pride that we have our names on the records of Freemasonry. May it be our high ambition that they should shed a luster on the ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... through her dark ringlets, or rustling over the dry grass and heather bushes at her side, she thought a spirit spoke, or a celestial messenger crossed her path. The unholy rites of the witches were familiar to her ear, but she spurned their vulgar and low ambition; she panted for communion with beings more exalted—demigods and immortals, of whom she had heard as having been translated to those happier skies, forming the glorious constellations she beheld. Sometimes fancies wild and horrible assaulted ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fires ambition; love of gain Strikes like a pestilence from breast to breast; Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapor's breath; And inhumanity is caught from man, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... but it was evident that his heart was irrevocably fixed—that he had no intention of ever marrying again. Finally the disappointed girl gave her hand to a rich, but aged and feeble lord, and tried to satisfy her heart and ambition with the golden husks ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... The excuse we are trying to make for the mechanicians is illusory. There is no mistaking their ambition, Notwithstanding the prudence of some and the equivocations in which others have rejoiced, they have drawn their definition in the absolute and not in the relative. To take their conceptions literally, they have thought the movement of matter to be something existing outside ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... its formation, he served for several years as representative in Congress, and in 1867 was elected senator from N.Y. He labored for the impeachment of President Johnson and was one of the senatorial coterie that influenced Grant. He was disappointed in his ambition to be nominated for president in 1876, and in 1880 he was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful movement to nominate Grant for ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... of course, your only desire is to see your colours again? I know that it is only ambition ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... scenes which impressed the same idea still more upon my mind. Semur, I need not say, is not the centre of the world, and might, therefore, be supposed likely to escape the full current of worldliness. We amuse ourselves little, and we have not any opportunity of rising to the heights of ambition; for our town is not even the chef-lieu of the department,—though this is a subject upon which I cannot trust myself to speak. Figure to yourself that La Rochette—a place of yesterday, without either ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... no credit to me in the matter. I am quite consistent. There is no reason why I should not be perfectly candid with you. I wish to be king over these fellows—not a very high ambition, certainly, but you know what Caesar said about being first in a village in Gaul. Well, this unlucky stone of yours has not only saved your life, but has turned all their heads so that they think you are come down from heaven, and my influence will be gone until ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!—how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:[163] there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have thought ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... had the Colony done for him? He had not now twenty francs to his name, and was a thousand francs in debt; he had essayed to study medicine, but balked at the first lesson. Yet, though these suggestions, rather than convictions, occurred to him, they stirred no latent ambition. If he had ever known one high resolution, the Southern Colony had pulled it up, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... moment. He yields his claim upon Elvira's affection, but exacts a promise from his rival, that when he demands it, Ernani shall be prepared to take his own life. Charles's magnanimity frustrates the conspiracy, and Silva, defeated alike in love and ambition, claims the fulfilment of Ernani's oath, despite the prayers of Elvira, who is condemned to see her lover stab himself in her presence. Hugo's melodrama suited Verdi's blood-and-thunder style exactly. 'Ernani' is crude and sensational, but its rough vigour never descends to weakness, though it ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... daring and showy than even his best friends are? What's his game? What does he expect to get out of it? He don't do it just for the fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts along the line of ambition and extraordinary hustling in the marketplaces, forums, shooting-galleries, lyceums, battle-fields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of the civilized and vice versa ...
— Options • O. Henry
... much empty talk as any random arguments?" Pao-ch'ai exclaimed. "Why every sentence in it is founded on fact. You've only had the management of affairs in your hands for a couple of days, and already greed and ambition have so beclouded your mind that you've come to look upon Chu-tzu as full of fraud and falsehood. But when you by and bye go out into the world and see all those mighty concerns reeking with greed and corruption, you'll even go ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... low comedian at one of the transpontine theatres. The height of his ambition was to have the offer of an engagement from one of the West-end managers. Only give him the opportunity, and he felt sure that he could work his way with a cultivated audience. When a lad of sixteen he had run away from home with a company of strolling players, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... a pretty rendezvous this king would set for me!" And then she swept from the room, raged for a time apart, and so took leave of life and of ambition. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... there is no telling what it may be. Our country must go on, she must press forward to new opportunities, she must dwell in new places. It is through people like us that such growth comes about, we don't ourselves know why. A little ambition, a little hope, a great blind impulse, and we go forward. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... in the down-town department stores of Chicago, the majority are Americans. We all know that the American girl has grown up in the belief that the world is hers from which to choose, that there is ordinarily no limit to her ambition or to her definition of success. She realizes that she is well mannered and well dressed and does not appear unlike most of her customers. She sees only one aspect of her countrywomen who come shopping, and she may well believe that the chief concern of life is fashionable clothing. ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... it was Hunter's ambition to establish a museum where the study of anatomy, surgery, and medicine might be advanced, and in 1765 he asked for a grant of a plot of ground for this purpose, offering to spend seven thousand pounds on its ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... was postponed. Views of wider ambition were opening upon Buonaparte, who now almost undisguisedldy aspired to make himself master of the continent of Europe; and Austria was preparing for another struggle, to be conducted as weakly and terminated as miserably as the former. Spain, too, was once ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... respect accorded him in the community. Sutton suggested to the young man that he should come to New York presently, there to learn the details of manufacture, with the prospect of return, later on, to manage the business in the mountains. Naturally, the project was splendid to Zeke's ambition. His only fear had been lest his departure be delayed by lack of money, for pride would not let him confess his extremity to Sutton. There must be some cash in hand for his mother's support, until he should be able to send her more. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... I hate egotism, I think my friend was right. Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean-spirited fellow, with no more ambition than to know the contents of a few musty books, I think the man had some good in him; especially in the resolution with which he bore his calamities. Many a gallant man of the highest honour is often not proof against these, and has been known to despair over a bad dinner, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... children than as men and women: it needs your [5] innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontami- nated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world. What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to [10] know that your example, more than ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... but you see your father has always had the worthy ambition to give his son a good education, and make him something better than ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... glide adown thy stream Gently,—as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream. Humble voyagers are we, Husband, wife, and children three— One is lost,—an angel, fled To the azure overhead. Touch us gently, Time! We've not proud nor soaring wings: Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things. Humble voyagers are we, O'er life's dim, unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime:— ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... PANDOLFINI says:—Many an eye has been surprised into moisture by pictured woe and heroism; and we are mistaken if the glow of pleasure has not lighted in some hearts the flame of high resolve, or warmed into life the seeds of honorable ambition." ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of 'King Arthur' must henceforth be ranked amongst our national masterpieces. In it we behold the crowning achievement of the author's life. His ambition cannot rise to a greater altitude. He has accomplished that which once had its seductions for the deathless and majestic mind of Milton. He has now assumed a place among the kings ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... party, compactly organized and vigorously wielded, placed in its hands the power of the state. It bestowed political offices and honors, and was thereby enabled to command the apostate homage of political ambition. Other nations felt the prevalence in your national councils of its insolent and domineering spirit. There was a moment, most critical in the history of America and of the world, when it seemed as though that continent, with all its resources and all its hopes, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... what, somebody takes the lead and the others allow him to go on. In that way political bosses are made, and when you hear a man howling against bosses at the top of his lungs, distending his cheeks to the bursting point, you may know that he has ambition to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called knowledge, but ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... into two small kingdoms with separate aims and interests, Turkey could not be held in check any longer, and the Russians, who are so full of ambition for power in the East, could do pretty ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 60, December 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... These are, of course, only laxities, and not the result of ignorance. Though learning commands much respect, persons of high education are comparatively rare, but shrewdness and general capacity, together with the will to work and the ambition to succeed, are more universal than with us. I have been pleased to observe that "gentlemen of leisure" and moneyed young men without employment are almost totally lacking. The greater number of the business-men, particularly of the most enterprising ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the ranks of the priesthood were for ever firmly closed against intruders, a man of lay birth, a Kshatriya or Vaisya, whose mind revolted against the orthodox creed, and whose heart was stirred by mingled zeal and ambition, might find through these irregular orders an entrance to the career of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... things in the leading articles of some of them. My greatest pleasure, in the midst of all this praise, is to think of the pleasure which my success will give to my father and my sisters. It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind been softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affection has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to distinguish myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and to the interest which she always took in my childish successes. From my ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... knew well the deity that led him to that place, and the anxious care that governed each Sunday's work. To bring his choir to the perfect standard of musical merit which his artist soul craved was his ambition. He knew pleasure as he approximated to that goal, and vexation almost to despair when he fell far short. He knew it was not before God but at another shrine he poured out his ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... no capacity for business," he declared. "I have no ambition to be a Pullman or an Edison. I would rather see myself a Franklin or a Fulton. You shall ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... improvement is indeed urgently needed. For if in any country party lines are decided by geographical considerations, as town v. country; by class, as Capital v. Labour; by race as in South Africa; by religion as in Belgium; or by personal ambition for the spoils of office—in any of these cases the future of that country is open to ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... life devoted to the public service—such were his objects, and such, in fact, were his achievements. The "Marquis Peu-a-peu," as George IV called him, had what he wanted. But this would never have been the case if it had not happened that the ambition of Stockmar took a form exactly complementary to his own. The sovereignty that the Baron sought for was by no means obvious. The satisfaction of his essential being lay in obscurity, in invisibility—in passing, unobserved, through a hidden ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of course. Montmorency's ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... fine scorn of doubt, the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, the ardor, the glory of devotion. Through those strange spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart renouncing all other hope, all other ambition, all other life, than the possible love of some one of those statues. Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not the love to give. The Parian face was so polished and smooth, because there was no sorrow upon the heart,—and, drearily often, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... to their surroundings and their fitness to survive. The lowly amoeba can perform these unenterprising functions more fitly than himself. And the Artist would never be satisfied with so mean and meagre an ambition as merely to adapt himself to his surroundings and fit himself to survive. If he saw evidence of no higher expectation than that in the workings of Nature, his heart would certainly not cleave to her heart. And there ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... repulsive rival. For two or three days he absented himself from the school; he then returned and worked, if with less cheerfulness, with far more dogged resolution than before; the stimulus of love had given place to that of ambition. Months passed away, and, contrary to his expectation, and, indeed, to the direct promise of the parties, Gerard Douw heard nothing of his niece or her worshipful spouse. The interest of the money, which was to have been demanded in quarterly ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... bit of it! Ambition be hanged. I don't care about that. But we're going to the Holy Land yet, if we put it off until seventy times seven. We'll wait till young Roderick's grown up and pays us back, and then we'll go. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... be a doctor, lawyer, or clergyman, and certainly not a professor. He would have liked to pack a satchel, and start westward, prospect for a railroad, gold or silver mine, and live the rugged, unconventional camp-life. Once he had ventured to suggest this noble ambition; but his timid mother was startled out of her wits, and his grandmother said with a sage shake of ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... there for two years, saving her pay. Her ambition was to have her sons study in a seminary and graduate as priests. And now came the return of Manuel, the elder son, to upset her plans. What could ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... He had an army bled white by four years of dreadful warfare. The French soldiers, no less valiant than when the war began, found themselves too weak in numbers to stem the tide of an advance conducted by an ambition crazed Crown Prince determined to reach Paris regardless of the cost ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Paul's ambition was aroused. It was for his interest to make as large sales as possible. Besides, he thought he would like to prove to George Barry that he had made a good selection in appointing him ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... than against the white road-agents and man-killers. His father had fought in Meagher's Brigade in the Civil War; and he was himself a born soldier, a born leader of men. He was a wild, reckless fellow, soft spoken, and of dauntless courage and boundless ambition; he was staunchly loyal to his friends, and cared for his men in every way. There was Captain Llewellen, of New Mexico, a good citizen, a political leader, and one of the most noted peace-officers ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... may be so administered as to preserve its efficiency in promoting and securing these general objects should be the only aim of our ambition, and we can not, therefore, too carefully examine its structure, in order that we may not mistake its powers or assume those which the people have reserved to themselves or have preferred to assign to other agents. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... had for the moment forgotten that the Council of Regency was now discharged of its office, and that I was to assume the full burden of my responsibilities. I had looked forward to this time with eagerness and ambition. But a man's emotions at a given moment are very seldom what he has expected them to be. Some foreign thought intrudes and predominates; something accidental supplants what has seemed so appropriate and certain. While I ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... come upon a clue even at this late day so fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my questions, I learned that there were many who could testify to having heard a woman's shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the alarm given by old Cyrus, but ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... in the old Orchard Chapel. Mr. Abercrombie is a genial, smooth-natured, quiet man—talks easily yet carefully, preaches earnestly yet evenly; there is no froth in either his prayers or sermons; he never gets into fits of uncontrollable passion, never rides the high horse of personal ambition, nor the low ass of religious vulgarity—keeps cool, behaves himself, and looks after his work midly and well. He has two or three sons in the United Methodist Free Church ministry, and one of them, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... make my son a Christian," he said, answering them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous," he told his son, "and then serve your country with heart and soul." The youth was instructed to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero of our Parliament, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... well that they did not learn it sooner. Well for them and for the world, that they did not unite on any false ground of interest or ambition, but had to wait for the true ground of unity, the knowledge of the God-man, King of all ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the battle, was struck on the head by a stone from a mangonel on the walls, and killed on the spot, June 25, 1218. He was a remarkable type of that character fostered by the system of the Middle Ages, where ambition and cruelty existed side by side with austere devotion, and were encouraged as if ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... place at the head of the class, and I always stood next. Two prizes were offered in Greek. I strove for one and took the second. How well I remember my joy in receiving that prize. There was no sentiment of ambition, rivalry, or triumph over my companions, nor feeling of satisfaction in receiving this honor in the presence of those assembled on the day of the exhibition. One thought alone filled my mind. "Now," said I, "my father will be satisfied with me." So, as soon as we were dismissed, I ran ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... leave her side again. She was very poor; and her family, although noble and of good repute, did not, however, rank amongst the most illustrious, for which reason Wolfgang dared not expect to receive the consent of old Roderick to a union with her, for the old Freiherr's aim and ambition was to promote by all possible means the establishment of a powerful family. Nevertheless he ventured to write from Paris to his father, acquainting him with the fact that his affections were engaged. But what ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Harley of that day displayed a rare modesty. The king offered him a viscounty, but he declined the honor, "lest his zeal and services for the restoration of the ancient government should be reproached as proceeding from ambition, and not conscience;" and so scrupulous was he that his being made a knight of the Bath even was done without his knowledge, he being then at Dunkirk, and Charles inserting with his own hand his name in the list. But his son was destined for a higher dignity, for he it was who became in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Macbeth. The whole story has its key in that verse where we read, "There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel, his wife, stirred up." As in the play, so in this Scripture, we have the unrestrained and ferocious ambition of the wife conspiring with the equally cruel, but less hardy ambition of the husband. When Macbeth had murdered sleep, when he could not screw his courage to the sticking-point, when his purpose looked green and pale, his wife stings him with taunts, scathes him with sarcasm, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that Judge Wright remembered the weak lad he had left on Colonel Boone's hands, a victim of a father's lack of training, and found here, instead, the same lad, but with much of the weakness erased, a man now, with an ambition to ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... He was twenty-six feet high. His body was entirely covered with hair, and his face was as black as iron. He was a wizard and a very terrible character indeed. When the Emperor Fuki died, Kokai was bitten with the ambition to be Emperor of China, but his plan failed, and Jokwa, the dead Emperor's sister, mounted the throne. Kokai was so angry at being thwarted in his desire that he raised a revolt. His first act was to employ the Water Devil, who caused a great flood to rush over the country. This swamped the ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... prosperity would be lessened. As the existence and the happiness of none of the States are wholly dependent on the present Constitution, they would none of them be disposed to make great personal sacrifices to maintain it. On the other hand, there is no State which seems hitherto to have its ambition much interested in the maintenance of the existing Union. They certainly do not all exercise the same influence in the federal councils, but no one of them can hope to domineer over the rest, or to treat them as its ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... escape. The race-track furnished one diversion for his unhappy energies, books of poetry another. Then he met a painter who painted and loved sumptuous and beautiful blondes, whereupon art and women became the new centers of his life, and Paris, where both might be indulged in, his great ambition. Given permission and an allowance, he set off to study art in Paris—only to find after much effort and heartache that he was a failure as an artist. There remained, however, women—and the cafes, with strange poets and personalities to be cultivated and explored. Modelling ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... father grew to like it. No one knew how Sam had acquired the habit; it was simply the expression of an inherently respectful nature. He reverenced his father and loved his father's profession of farmer. His earliest pleasure was to hold the reins and drive "like Colonel Jinks," and his earliest ambition was to become a teamster, that part of the farm work having peculiar ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... which must have been an object of ambition to anybody else; but it only made him wipe his mouth; and presently the two set forth upon ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... his son was left rich in purse and brain, which are good foundations, and fuel to ambition; and, it may be supposed, he was on all occasions well heard of the King as a person of mark and compassion in his eye, but I find not that he did put up for advancement during Henry VIII.'s time, although a vast aspirer and ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... minute or two she would, or draped in her great shawl, thoughts of this kind sank to their proper level, and Miss Chapman knew them for what they were worth. But sitting alone by night, her chin in her hand, her eyes on the dying fire, around her the eerie stillness of the great house, her ambition did not seem wholly out of reach; and, giving rein to her fancy, she could picture herself sweeping through halls and rooms, issuing orders that it was the business of others to fulfil, could even think out ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... affectionate disposition; you love pretty things to wear and every sort of pleasure. There is your gravest fault and greatest danger, pretty: love of clothes and pleasure and—forgive the wise old woman's plain speaking—false ambitions. Beware of the sin of vain ambition; only wrong and unhappiness can come of that. No, no; don't draw your hand away. I have not finished. Let me look closer. There is much written here that you should know and none but my wise ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... almost as well as ever. She is growing stronger every day, and will probably before long be able to attain her ambition—"to ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... restlessness? Shall I explain what I think about that? I'm restless because of ambition; I want to reconquer an independent position. I put all my soul into my trials, but as soon as I see there's no future for me in that line, I give it up and go elsewhere. 'Je ne veux pas etre rond de cuir,' breaking my back to economise sixpence a day, and save enough after ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... these fruits of his ambition, and all the honors which attended him, could not yield true and solid satisfaction. Reflecting on the evils and miseries which he had occasioned, and convinced of the emptiness of earthly magnificence, he became disgusted with the splendor that surrounded ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answer pride or luxury or ambition or egotism? No; I shall say indolence. Who conquers indolence will conquer all the rest. Indeed, all good principles must ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched. He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue—and then all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... and confidence expressed in those words! the daring, the ambition! the pride! and the soft, languorous air of the old-world garden round her then, the passion of his embrace! the heavy scent of late roses and of heliotrope, which caused her to swoon in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... It is a religion of Atheism. Instead of a Heavenly Father forgiving sin, and filial service from a pure heart, as the effect of love—it presents nothing to love, for its Deity is dead; nothing as the ultimate object of action but self; and nothing for man's highest and holiest ambition ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... I ought rather to call it slander. I've no ambition to be thought such a character. Quite the reverse, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... came the answering shout, as Blake whirled and tore away after his men. There had been a time in his distant past when the navy, not the army, was his ambition, and he still retained some of the ways of the sea. Just as Webb feared, some few of Stabber's young warriors had been left behind, and their eagle-eyed lookout had sighted the far-distant courier almost as soon ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the might of Bhima, the powerful Duryodhana, the eldest son of Dhritarashtra, began to conceive hostility towards him. And the wicked and unrighteous Duryodhana, through ignorance and ambition, prepared himself for an act of sin. He thought, 'There is no other individual who can compare with Bhima, the second son of Pandu, in point of prowess. I shall have to destroy him by artifice. Singly, Bhima dares a century of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... "Thus the ambition of two young princes, the title of the one founded on ancient usage, and of the other asserted by the veteran troops, involved Peru in civil war, a calamity to which it had been hitherto a stranger, under ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... company grated on me. It was impossible to think of Patsy Dale with the fellow's cruel babble ringing in my ears. I remained silent and he garrulously recounted some of his many exploits, and with gusto described how he had trapped various victims. It was his one ambition of life. He cared nothing ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... son Prithwi Narayan (Purthi Nerayn in Kirkpatrick) was a person of insatiable ambition, sound judgment, great courage, and unceasing activity. Kind and liberal, especially in promises to his friends and dependants, he was regardless of faith to strangers, and of humanity to his enemies, that is, to ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... to gain a little reputation which Esmond had had, left him now perhaps that he had attained some portion of his wish, and the great motive of his ambition was over. His desire for military honor was that it might raise him in Beatrix's eyes. 'Twas next to nobility and wealth, the only kind of rank she valued. It was the stake quickest won or lost too; for law is a very long game that requires a life to practise; and to be distinguished ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the richest fields and wealthiest houses for plunder, determined to murder any one who offered resistance. Their generals were too much in their debt to venture any opposition. Of the two Caecina showed less greed and more ambition. Valens had earned a bad name by his own ill-gotten gains, and was therefore bound to shut his eyes to others' shortcomings.[340] The resources of Italy had long been exhausted; all these thousands of infantry and cavalry, all this violence and damage and outrage was almost more ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... thoroughly discussed in an exact and settled terminology. To arrange and classify all the objects of knowledge, to discuss them systematically and, as far as possible, exhaustively, was evidently the ambition, perhaps also the special function, of Aristotle. He would survey the entire field of human knowledge; he would study nature as well as humanity, matter as well as mind, language as well as thought; he would define the proper ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... I my cross have taken All to leave and follow Thee; Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, Thou, from hence my all shall be. Perish every fond ambition, All I've sought, or hoped, or known, Yet how rich is my condition, God and heaven are still ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... great difficulty. The evangelical doctrines were spreading in all directions, and their enemies demanded that they be rooted out. A report was even started, that Matteos himself was a Protestant, and his convictions were known to have been at one time in that direction; but his interests and his ambition now led him to oppose. He had attained the highest post in his nation, and was resolved to keep it. As the evangelical brethren would not yield, he must, if possible, put them down. He resolved to sacrifice the Protestants; and all his powers, personal and official, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... sing finer music than 'The Starry Night,'" she said. "You have the capacity. Ah, but you enjoy too much; you are petted and spoiled, yes? you have not a great ambition—" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... ever find true joy, real pleasure in the subjects of their studies for their own sakes? Never! Therefore the teachers had to appeal incessantly to the lower passions of their pupils, to ambition, self-interest, material advantages. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite as good ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an entertaining French novel called En felons des Perles. On the illustrated cover was a row of undraped damsels sitting in oyster-shells, and the text of the book went to show how it was the hero's ambition to make a rosary of these pearls. Now I am a dull pig. Why? Because I do not add Carlotta to my rosary. I never heard such a monstrous thing in my life. To begin with, I have ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Europe. Every household in Upper Egypt and in the Delta was dependent upon slave service; the fields in the Soudan were cultivated by slaves; the women in the harems of both rich and middle class were attended by slaves; the poorer Arab woman's ambition was to possess a slave; in fact, Egyptian society without slaves would be like a carriage devoid of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... yet, as you, who can so easily read the innermost secrets of the heart, must know I have not been able to discern the happiness for myself in this union that my soul would crave, or that you led me to expect in wedded love. If my ambition irresistibly impelled me to fill the external destinies of mankind, to become a monarch of unsurpassed power and magnificence, then would Nu-nah be the royal consort absolutely adapted for such pride and pomp. But, you know, O Father, all these things ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... west of the Narragansett district, and near the entrance of Long Island Sound, dwelt a powerful division of the Pequodees; of that race of red warriors whose pride and ambition caused them to be both feared and hated by the other tribes in the vicinity. They could bring upwards of seven hundred warriors into the field, and their Chief, Sassacus, had, in common with almost all the great Indian Sagamores, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... carrying some of the puffs for which she was famous, and which she had just made with her own hands. She also served them with milk, grapes and other fruit, her eyes sparkling with delight and gratified ambition; for the son of the great Mukaukas, the pride of the city, who in former years had often been her visitor, and not only for the sake of her cakes, in water parties with his gay companions—mostly Greek officers who now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... too small in population, and too slight in strength to be much of a menace to Boston, Hartford, or New York. It was the statesmen in France and England, rather than the colonists in America, who first grasped the significance of the slowly converging empires in North America. It was the ambition of Louis XIV of France, rather than the labors of Jesuit missionaries and French rangers, that sounded the first ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... clearly see that the results of this striving and the objects of my ambition have been largely, if not entirely, material, I shall take the space to set forth in full detail just what this material success amounts to, in order that I may the better determine whether it has been worth struggling for. Not only are the figures that follow accurate and honest, but ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... before he replaced it, he drew the back of his soft leather glove across his dripping forehead. The unconventional action touched her keenly. She was sensitively subject to outward impressions, and "the plastic" had long been her delight, her ambition, and her despair. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Festa, in which Gil Vicente is declared to be 'very stout and over 60.' This cannot be dismissed like the former passage, for it is evidently a personal reference to Gil Vicente. It was the comedian's ambition to raise a laugh in his audience and this might be effected by saying the exact opposite of what the audience knew to be true: e.g. to speak of Gil Vicente as very stout and over 60 if he was very young and ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... desire to see a fire sparkling, the scout had started in to try and make a blaze after the old-fashioned method used by some South Sea islanders. But evidently the boy did not twirl the stick fast enough to produce sufficient heat to make the fine tinder smoke, and then take fire. Giraffe's ambition was commendable, however, and so Thad said nothing; only crept away again, after touching Allan ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to me that, till now, Brazil should not have enjoyed a national representation, and to be forced by circumstances to take upon myself to legislate on some points: but my measures cannot appear to have arisen from ambition to legislate, arrogating to myself the whole power, of which I only could claim a part—for they were taken to save Brazil,—because when some of them were adopted the assembly had not been convoked, and when ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... can remember, almost, I have cherished a modest ambition to hunt lions and elephants. At an early age, or, to be more exact, at about that age which finds most boys wondering whether they would rather be Indian fighters or sailors, I ran across a copy of Stanley's Through the Dark Continent. It was full of fascinating adventures. I ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... to think that he failed in both of the objects of his highest ambition. His philosophic Method is demonstrably a failure; his attempt to convert James and Buckingham to his views resulted in his own unjust disgrace with contemporaries and posterity. The truth is, that, cool, serene, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... exile from his subjects and family after ten months' miserable endurance of the hardships wrongfully imposed on him, almost causes a feeling of exultation at the downfall of a despot, who, aiming at the sovereignty of the world, scrupled not to sacrifice virtue and good faith at the shrine of ambition. The fate of both chiefs was similar, for both perished in captivity—the one the victim, perhaps, of inordinate ambition, the other of unscrupulous avarice and envious malignity. The misfortunes of Toussaint L'Ouverture have indeed with justice been pronounced the "history of the negro race," ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the Spirit I may abundantly love Thee."[15] They contain bursts of intense prayer—"Put thy owne image and beauty more and more on my soule." He went through all the Parliamentary storms of that great epoch; he was Provost of Eton College; he was Cromwell's friend; but his main ambition seems to have been to be "knit to God by a personal union," to have "the {271} dayspring in his own heart," and to be taught in "the heavenly ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... constant recollection of his soul. Honored by all the world, even by kings, he was never affected with vanity. Powerful in works and miracles, he looked upon himself as the most unworthy and most unprofitable among the servants of God, and had no other ambition than to appear such in the eyes of others, as he was in those of his own humility. By his courage in maintaining the law of God and the canons of the church, he showed that true greatness of soul is founded in the most sincere humility. In the third council of Orleans, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Where echo whispers not the far-off strife That slays our loved ones; in the solemn halls Of safe and quiet counsel—nay, beneath The temple-roofs that we have reared to Thee, And 'mid their rising incense—God of Peace! The curse of war is on us. Greed and hate Hungering for gold and blood; Ambition, bred Of passionate vanity and sordid lusts, Mad with the base desire of tyrannous sway Over men's souls and thoughts, have set their price On human hecatombs, and sell and buy Their sons and brothers for the shambles. Priests, With white, anointed, supplicating hands, From Sabbath unto Sabbath ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... character. He has been compared with Lord Byron, one of our most impassioned thinkers and writers; but the noble poet's heart-griefs were on the wrong side. Judging of his own feelings by those painted on his heroes—they fight for freedom only to gratify lust, pride, and ambition, while the future appeared in dark, dreary uncertainty. But Bunyan strives to be released from the slavery of sin and Satan, that he might enjoy the liberty of being a servant of Christ, whose service is perfect ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Anstie remarked, more than thirty years ago, in his work on Neuralgia: "It is a comparatively frequent thing to see an unsocial, solitary life (leading to the habit of masturbation) joined with the bad influence of an unhealthy ambition, prompting to premature and false work in literature and art." From the literary side, M. Leon Bazalgette has dealt with the tendency of much modern literature to devote itself to what he calls "mental onanism," of which the probable counterpart, he seems to hint, is a physical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sententious imperturbability was only on the surface; whether it was a natural characteristic or an acquired manner is not easy to decide. Below the surface of measured reticent composure there lay a temperament of ardent enthusiasm, and not less ardent ambition. In subtlety he was a match for the wiliest Oriental, whom face to face he dominated with a placid dauntless masterfulness that was all his own. The wild hill tribes among whom he went about escortless, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... civil service of India. He is now five months above seventeen years of age; and by the time he is eighteen, he will, I hope, under Mr. Yeatman's judicious care, be able to pass his examination for Haileybury, should he, through your means, obtain this the utmost object of his ambition. Over and above the desire to follow his father's footsteps in India, he is anxious to avoid the necessity of encroaching so much upon the small means I have to provide for his four sisters, by entering so expensive a branch of the public service as the Dragoons. I know the great nature ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Instinctively he took the lead, not from ambition, but because it was natural; he read all the signs and he led on with a certainty to which neither Ross nor Shif'less Sol pretended to aspire. The two guides and hunters were near each other, and a look passed ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... furnished even more officers than we needed, with thorough education, and the refined and expensive habits that education brings with it. The ranks were filled with foreigners and broken-down men, who had neither the ambition nor the ability to rise to anything higher. But we have changed all that. The healthiest and best blood of our country is flowing in that country's cause. Our army is composed of more than half a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have been so throughout the greater part of their history, and the characteristic is now more marked than ever. It is a fixed condition of their national being, an expression of the cumulative ambition that is the source of their varied progress. Yet from time to time men have arisen among them who not only have given intimate views of a new civilisation, but have added something to the permanent stock of what Matthew Arnold used to call 'the best that is known and thought ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey- bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get by hook or by crook. She comes from the oldest country, Asia, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of our late disasters. I know all the effect with it would have upon the minds of our soldiers, of our allies, of our enemies in Asia, and of our countrymen, and of all foreign nations in Europe. It is an object of just ambition, which no one more than myself would rejoice to see effected; but I see that failure in the attempt is certain and irretrievable ruin; and I would endeavour to inspire you with the necessary caution, and make you feel that, great as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... difference between the two lives. What would become of them when she was no longer there? Either her mother would work too hard and would kill herself; or else the poor woman would be obliged to cease working altogether, and that selfish husband, forever engrossed by his theatrical ambition, would allow them both to drift gradually into abject poverty, that black hole which widens and deepens as one ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... after rising to the highest fame as a statesman and orator, passing away at threescore and ten, his latest years overshadowed by the grief of a disappointed ambition. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... their ambition the French were kept aloof by the deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerful savages in the New World. The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white settlers were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all belonged to one or another of three great ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... postchaise was rattling along the highway. For a long time my mind was completely absorbed by thoughts of my sisters, of Henrietta, of my mother, and of all the happiness I left behind me; but these ideas gradually quitted me as I lost sight of the turrets of La Roche Bernard, and dreams of ambition and of glory took the entire possession of my mind. What schemes! What castles in the air! What noble actions I performed in my postchaise!! I denied myself nothing: wealth, honors, dignities, success of every kind, I merited and I awarded ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her colonies: she was not required to withdraw from Switzerland and Holland. Who could expect, from what was then known of Bonaparte's character, that a peace so fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French honour and his own ambition? ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... member of the Board, "do you feel that you are really suited for the life of the Navy? Is it your highest ambition to become an officer ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... displayed her brilliant teeth at her daughter's answer, then stooped, and kissed her brow. Mrs. Delancey loved her child, with all the strength of affection she was capable of feeling. She was even first in her heart in some moments of pride and ambition, and second never, save to her ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... friend's mind, and she was ready with examples of girls of high birth and exemplary virtues who practised it with impunity: it gave a finish to the character of a woman, proved she would sometimes act for herself, not always be in leading-strings; it gave a taste of power, gratified her ambition; in short, flirtation was the very acme of enjoyment, and gave a decided ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... fascinations which had once attracted him, gave his mind leisure and opportunity to reason with itself in more quietude and composure than could have been expected. And, as he more and more began to realize how closely she was wrapped up in her ambition, to the exclusion of any gentler feeling, and how, under the stimulant of her infatuated hopes, she was allowing herself each day to act with less guarded resolution, there were times when he found himself asking whether she had indeed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... adaptation of means to an end; endeavor refers to the exertions by which it is to be attained. One whose aims are worthy, whose aspirations are high, whose designs are wise, and whose purposes are steadfast, may hope to reach the goal of his ambition, and will surely win some object worthy of a life's ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... guests arrive. They are not obliged to choose between washing their own dishes, or having their cut glass, silver, and china left to the mercy of a foreigner, who has never done any thing but field work. And last, not least, they are not possessed with that ambition to do the impossible in all branches, which, I believe, is the death of a third of the women in America. What is there ever read of in books, or described in foreign travel, as attained by people in possession of every means and appliance, which our women will not undertake, single-handed, in ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... necessary to produce a good catcher, and if a person has any ambition to play the position, he should first examine himself to see whether he is the possessor of these. Here again the size of the candidate seems not to be of vital importance, for there are good catchers, from the little, sawed-off bantam, Hofford, ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... and Scott's brave, metropolitan utterance will be all equally the ghosts of speech. Till then I would love to have my hour as a native Maker, and be read by my own countryfolk in our own dying language: an ambition surely rather of the heart than of the head, so restricted as it is in prospect of endurance, so parochial ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... new ship, and superintended her fitting for sea. On 26th October he found himself transferred to the Stirling Castle, and it is only reasonable to suppose that, having formed a high opinion of Cook's work, and knowing of his ambition to rise in the service, he would give information of the opportunity and, as far as he could, push forward his friend's interests. At any rate, the Muster Rolls show that in less than six weeks from leaving ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... see, ambition! Ambition is a very pretty thing; but, sir, we must walk before we run, according to the old saying—what is that you have got ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Bosvils, was a tinker by profession; but, though a tinker, he was amazingly proud and haughty of heart. His grand ambition was to be a great man among his people, a Gypsy King. To this end he furnished himself with clothes made after the costliest Gypsy fashion: the two hinder buttons of the coat, which was of thick blue cloth, were broad gold pieces of Spain, generally called ounces; the fore-buttons were ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. He had no desires of that sort. He had reached the stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in England we do much better, or much worse, as ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... have listened to too many sad stories from heart-broken wives and mothers not to know that the demand which the women of the land make in this matter comes not from love of power, is not prompted by false ambition, springs not from unwomanly aspirations, but does come from a direful need of self-protection and an earnest desire to protect those ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... tombs. But the creative or foundational war is that in which the natural restlessness and love of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into modes of beautiful—though it may be fatal—play: in which the natural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into the aggressive conquest of surrounding evil: and in which the natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions, and purity of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... her dreams of childhood, never straying, never faltering, Still had needed Philip's image to make future life complete; Philip's young hopes of ambition, ever changing, ever altering, Needed Mildred's gentle presence even to ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... and my ambition were wrecked at a blow. The notion of returning for another three years to China, where all was now peaceful and stale to me, the excitement of the war at an end, every port reminding me of my old comrades, visions ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... occasion, when a foreign fleet was in our waters, he undertook the errand of your fathers, and performed it with unequalled success. It was in the service of your fathers that he won his great reputation as a lawyer; and to them and to you, disregarding the obvious dictates of personal interest and ambition, he clung for almost two-thirds of a century, as to his friends and neighbors, and to your city as the abode of his brilliant manhood, and the home of his declining years; and he has left his children and grandchildren, those dear ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... pedestal. A steep acclivity, like that of a rugged mountain, carries the eye to its summit, which looks down on the opposite side to a descent nearly perpendicular. The figure of the hero is on horseback, supposed to have attained the object of his ambition, by surmounting all the apparent impossibilities which so arduous an enterprise presented. The victorious animal is proudly rearing on the highest point of the rock, whilst his imperial master stretches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Carrados. "Do you know, Louis, I always had a secret ambition to be a detective myself. I have even thought lately that I might still be able to do something at it if the chance came my way. That ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... own part, our ambition never inclined to the adventurous task of exploring the bush, content with the subordinate part of trusting to the superior sagacity of the more experienced; and often have our wonder and admiration been excited by the unerring judgment of our guide, when there was neither sun ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... likely to produce a dividend, because its name was against it. Cut out "Imperialism"; substitute another word, with just as many syllables and no less an imposing sound, "Proletariat"; call the thing "Class Warfare"; advertise it thoroughly and attract to it all the political egoists of disappointed ambition in the various countries of the enemy, and the German War Lords would find it no longer necessary to crush all existing nations, since all existing nations would then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... was Kokai. He was twenty-six feet high. His body was entirely covered with hair, and his face was as black as iron. He was a wizard and a very terrible character indeed. When the Emperor Fuki died, Kokai was bitten with the ambition to be Emperor of China, but his plan failed, and Jokwa, the dead Emperor's sister, mounted the throne. Kokai was so angry at being thwarted in his desire that he raised a revolt. His first act was to employ the Water Devil, who caused ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... tenor of life went on for her as for others. After the first shock of parting was over, things went back to their accustomed routine. In one respect, however, there was a marked difference. So long as home conditions had remained unchanged, Lilla was content to put ambition far from her, and to settle down to the life which had been hers as long as she could remember. But Mimi's marriage set her thinking; naturally, she came to the conclusion that she too might have a mate. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy it, but, while maintaining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The last line of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition, is: "Humanity wants no ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Yet how many hundreds were daily falling at that time in warfare—how many thousands and tens of thousands were yet to fall, to gratify the insane ambition of a single man, permitted to be the fearful scourge that he was to the human race? We said as little about our expedition as we could, for the emigrants, as soon as they heard of so many of their countrymen being ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... perform well the duties of captain when the responsibility falls upon him, should be the constant study and ambition of the lieutenant. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... spoiled mankind. Oh, yes, machinery has made me rich! It has given the proletariat the privilege of wearing yellow diamonds and riding about in flivvers. That must be admitted. But to have lived in those days when ambition thought only in beauty! To have been the boon companions of men like Da Vinci, Cellini, Michelangelo! Then there are the adventures of this concrete dream of the artist. I can trace it back to the bare studio in which it ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... Montaiglon were announced she could have cried aloud with joy. It was not hard in that moment of her elation to understand why once the Chamberlain had loved her; beside the man to whom her own mad young ambition manacled her she seemed a vision of beauty none the worse for being ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... person. At first Ludovica had submitted to this strange conduct on the part of her husband with proud indifference, and not the slightest murmur, not the mildest reproach, had escaped her lips. For it was not from love that she had chosen this husband, but from ambition and pride. She had told herself that it would be better for her to be Empress of Austria than Princess of Modena and Este; and even the prospect of being the third wife of Francis of Austria, and the stepmother of the ten children whom his second wife had borne to him, had ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... idea of their adaptability in the way of pies, sauce or cider, but because she wanted to "be as gods knowing good and evil," as the Serpent said she would. Discontent with her wardrobe crept into her heart and ambition for something better sprang ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... Dowbiggin to join in the chorus, and Byles could be heard bleating from the closet. Ah, me! how soon we are spoiled by this sinful world, and lose the sweet innocence of our first years! how poor are the rewards of ambition compared with the simple ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... nations, of whom we shall have but a very imperfect idea, unless we have recourse to the inspired writers. They alone display, and bring to light, the secret thoughts of princes, their incoherent projects, their foolish pride, their impious and cruel ambition: they reveal the true causes and hidden springs of victories and overthrows; of the grandeur and declension of nations; the rise and ruin of states; and teach us, what indeed is the principal benefit to be derived from history, the judgment which the Almighty forms both of princes ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he had none—none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... maintained with fair success, a chamber of his nature had been preserved intact during many later years, like the one solitary sealed-up cell occasionally retained by bees in a lobe of drained honey-comb. And thus, though he had irretrievably exhausted the relish of society, of ambition, of action, and of his profession, the love-force that he had kept immured alive was still ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... WRETCH WITHOUT IT.—The wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, a more ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Sturt's address, and shews the disinterested and generous zeal which that talented and successful traveller was ever ready to exert on behalf of those who were inclined to follow the career of enterprise and ambition in which he had with ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... confidants. In fact, though he spoke to Mrs. Butterfield as if he had conceived some deep plan of rascality, the man was not capable of anything above petty mischief. He liked to pose in secret as a sort of transpontine schemer; that flattered his self-importance; but his ambition did not seriously go beyond making trouble in a legitimate way. He did indeed believe that something scandalous was going on, and it would be all the better fun to have Ackroyd join him with malicious pleasure in a campaign ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... enthusiastic newcomer, who had heard of a lion in the vicinity, and immediately asked the old stager if he were going after it: "I have not lost any lions, therefore I am not looking for any"; but, all the same, to kill one or more fine specimens will ever remain the summit of the ambition of the hunter, and unquestionably the spice of danger is one ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... of officers for the government of the settlement is the next step and must be conducted in a most solemn manner, it being sometimes necessary to increase the number of jobs in order to satisfy the ambition of the chiefs and of the elders. The chosen ones are presented with the official staff of command in the name of the governor, and with the traditional jacket. Thus the new town is established. It is placed under the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... appointed to wait upon us—informing us as we started that he had orders to have luncheon ready for us by one o'clock. Arrived at the scene of our labours we each selected a suitable block of wood, and whilst Courtenay set to work upon a model of the Hermione, I, with greater ambition, devoted all my energies to the hewing out of a line-of-battle ship. Thus occupied the time passed swiftly away, and almost before we were aware of it the commandant, who had looked in upon us to see how we ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... enough to realize that the way of advancement led through this important family and he never lost an opportunity to cultivate the President of the Council. Colonel Fairfax became a benefactor of the young man's fortunes, an inspiration to his ambition, and was truly and wholeheartedly attached through his affections to the gangling youth. To the end of his life Fairfax signed his letters to George, "Y^r very affect^e & ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... by his hand. That office, in either case, Napoleon himself performed. Throughout the ceremonial his aspect was thoughtful: it was on a stern and gloomy brow that he with his own hands planted the symbol of successful ambition and uneasy power, and the shouts of the deputies present, carefully selected for the purpose, sounded faint and hollow amidst the silence of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the nation will be the aim and boast of those who prize their local interests above the good of the nation, and millions upon millions will be abstracted by tariffs and taxes from the earnings of the whole people to foster speculation and subserve the objects of private ambition. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... torn apart. But I know she and I will never meet again. That I know as surely as that the sun will rise, and that cascade come shining over the rocks after I am dead and done.... Oh! It's all foolishness and haste and violence and cruel folly, stupidity and blundering hate and selfish ambition—all the things that men have done—all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a muddle and confusion life has always been—the battles and massacres and disasters, the hates and harsh acts, the murders and sweatings, the lynchings ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... foothold, or rather two footholds, in North America. One of her colonies, Louisiana, lay beyond Florida at the mouth of the Mississippi; the other, Canada, to the north of the Maine, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. It was the aim of French colonial ambition to extend both colonies inland into the unmapped heart of the American continent until they should meet. This would necessarily have had the effect of hemming in the English settlements on the Atlantic seaboard and preventing their Western expansion. Throughout ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... our conversation, and obtained a sight of the book. It was her ambition. I believe it was fatal to her. She may have caught up enough of the outline to betray it. Jock, you remember that ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remonstrances of his mother and his relatives, he started for the great West which then spelled opportunity to so many young men. He was only twenty years old, and he had not yet finished his academic course; but with the impatience of ambition he was reluctant to spend four more years in study before he could gain admission to the bar. In the newer States of the West conditions were easier. Moreover, he was no longer willing to be a burden ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Warde, "but I want to put one thing to you as strongly as a man may. I have always wished to be master of the Manor. Some men may think mine a small ambition. Master of a house at Harrow? Nothing big about that. Perhaps not. But I think it big. And it is big—for me. Understand that I'm in love with my job—head over heels. I'd sooner be master of the Manor than Prime Minister. I couldn't tackle his work. Enough of that. Now, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... these austerities and ask boons of me! Whatever your desires may be, they, with the single exception of that of immortality, will be fulfilled! As thou hast offered thy heads to the fire from great ambition, they will again adorn thy body as before, according to thy desire. And thy body will not be disfigured and thou shall be able to assume any form according to thy desire and become the conqueror of thy foes in battle. There is no doubt of this!" thereupon Ravana said, "May ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that it was altogether your fault, for an evil destiny bound me to you, and it must seem odd to you when I say that, knowing you for what you are, I still love you. And to fill up this void, to trample down those surging memories, I have made myself a slave to my ambition, and the acquisition of another power that you cannot understand. The man you married me to is rich and a knight to-day. I made him so. If I live another twenty years, his wealth shall be colossal and his influence unbounded, and I will be one ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Ferrara, departed from Venice in the month of December of the same year, and falling sick at Ferrara, died so suddenly as to give rise to the suspicion of foul play, which too easily sprang up in those days when ambition or private vengeance found ready to hand weapons so many and so convenient. Crowe and Cavalcaselle give good grounds for the assumption that, in order to save appearances, Titian was supposed—replacing ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... particular beings. It was there before heaven was; all things are from it and return to it at last. It is the principle at the root and the beginning of all things, by which they move, without haste or struggle, ambition or confusion. Existing first absolute and undeveloped, it has now been expressed; men can know it, and the secret of all goodness, all success both for the individual and for the state, is to know Tao and live in it. This makes a man superior ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... admiration for the King, one may readily believe that even a slight impression made upon the girl's imagination would be inevitably deepened and strengthened in these days when the court life at Fontainebleau is described as a delirium of ambition, pleasure and love. The merry-making and feasting continued, the fetes still being given in Madame's honor, and "the modest violet" might have remained hidden beneath its leaves had not Madame Henriette's schemes involved Louise. It appears that the Queen Mother, having in common ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Ambition as regards telescopic power is by no means yet satisfied. Nor ought it to be. The advance of astrophysical researches of all kinds depends largely upon light-grasp. For the spectroscopic examination of stars, for the measurement of their motions in the line of sight, for the discovery and ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... incongruity in colour. He needs the form and he does not mind the incongruity, nor does he mind the fact that somebody else has done the solid part and he has only done the ramshackle part. You can say that he is nobly superior to jealousy, or that he is without artistic ambition, or that he is too much of a nomad to mind living half in somebody else's house and half in his own. The real quality is probably too subtle for any simple praise or blame; we can only say that there is in the wandering Moslem a curious kind of limited common sense; which might ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... one apology for the production of a metrical essay, composed chiefly of imperfect and immature pieces:—the ambition to contribute towards the fund of Christmas entertainment, in which agreeable labour I see many popular names engaged,—and among them, one, the most deservedly popular in the literature of the day. The favour with which an influential portion of the press ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... him to have made to Stratford, look like any thing but a wish to forget them or be forgotten by them. From what is known of his subsequent life, it is certain that he had, in large measure, that honourable ambition, so natural to an English gentleman, of being the founder of a family; and as soon as he had reached the hope of doing so, he retired to his old home, and there set up his rest, as if his best sunshine of life still waited on the presence of her from whose society he is alleged to have fled ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... see," he said, "I'm not trying for their admiration. I haven't the slightest ambition to shine as a cow-puncher, and if those fellows are fair samples I don't want anybody to mistake me ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... by vulgar ambition, his loftiest desires might have been fully gratified by the career which Amurath projected for him. The Turkish Sultan destined for the Grecian Prince the hand of one of his daughters, and the principal command of his armies. He lavished upon him the highest dignities and boundless ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the command of the productions of the torrid zone, and the advantageous commerce which that afforded, gave to Great Britain the power and the resources which enabled her to meet, to combat, and to overcome, her numerous and reckless enemies in every battle-field, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... much of an ambition. I should call that simply foolhardy!" Joy could never understand such a desire. It was too far away ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... state of the law then prevented the writ from being moved until that time, and during the whole of that year the Ferrars family had pursued a course of unflagging display. Courage, expenditure, and tact combined, had realised almost the height of that social ambition to which Mrs. Ferrars soared. Even in the limited and exclusive circle which then prevailed, she began to be counted among the great dames. As for the twins, they seemed quite worthy of their beautiful and luxurious mother. Proud, wilful, and selfish, they had one redeeming quality, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... but a set of verses which Kenrick had written for a prize exercise, and which he had just sent in too late. He had not lost all ambition, but he had no real friend now to inspirit or stimulate him, so that he often procrastinated, and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... intention to persevere in a state of indolence and humility, whilst the duke, after having received the favours, or suffered the repulses, of all the coquettes in England, pays his addresses to the maids of honour, one after the other, and at present places his whole ambition and desires in the conquest of that ugly skeleton, Churchill? What! Madam, must then your prime of life be spent in a sort of widowhood in deploring your misfortunes, without ever being permitted to make use of any remedy ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... trifles—sandwiches, wafers, fancy cakes, ices, and possibly a salad. Foreigners understand the value of the simple feast which makes frequent entertaining possible and a delight rather than a burden. In America the menu, decorations, etc., grow more and more elaborate from the ambition of each successive hostess to out-do her neighbor, until the economy and beauty of simplicity is irretrievably lost in the greater expense, fatigue and crush of ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... lonely night and conscience speaks to him. But there are many distractions to ease his pain—the pleasures and amusements of life, the company of friends, the pursuit of business, the excitements of ambition. So he can manage a good deal to forget God, to acquire a distaste for God, and yet to dull the still small voice that hurts him. But these distractions are gone now. He has gone out into the new life, naked, alone. All the money and business ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... which her own family moved. Any day she might marry out of that middle-class world into the world of fashion. He saw that the girl moved in, and was happiest in, a great world to which he had not the key. He had the ambition to belong to that world, though his common-sense might have told him that he never could do more than hang about its outer courts. He was a calculating blackguard, a man of loose life, and a vulgar fellow with vulgar ambitions. He saw astutely enough that this girl was well on the ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... New Salem village to President of the United States, from captain of a backwoods volunteer company to Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, was neither sudden nor accidental, nor easy. He was both ambitious and successful, but his ambition was moderate, and his success was slow. And, because his success was slow, it never outgrew either his judgment or his powers. Between the day when he left his father's cabin and launched his canoe on the headwaters of the Sangamon River to begin life on his own account, and the day ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... not going to be DOWNED for ever. I'll go through my particular piece of hell, on this darned old earth if I must, and then I'll wipe the slate and come out on top of something else that isn't love. There's possibilities enough along the Big Bight to satisfy most men's ambition. And it's not much odds any way, so long ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... taken to hold me in security. Certain it is that in my chains I thought more rationally, more nobly, reasoned more philosophically on man, his nature, his zeal, his imaginary wants, the effects of his ambition, his passions, and saw more distinctly his dream of earthly good, than those who had imprisoned, or those who guarded me. I was void of the fears that haunt the parasite who servilely wears the fetters of a court, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... helping to make many freemen, I liberate myself. You wonder why I refused promotion. Have I any right to it yet? Are there not men who never sinned as I have done, and beside whose sacrifices mine look pitifully small? You tell me I have no ambition. I have the highest, for I desire to become God's noblest work,—an honest man,—living, to make Margaret happy, in a love that every hour grows worthier of her own,—dying, to make death ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... in ten thousand, to the praise of his politeness, and the honour of them both!—And then, when select parties of pleasure or business engaged him not abroad, in his home conversation, to have him delight to instruct and open her views, and inspire her with an ambition to enlarge her mind, and more and more to excel! What an intellectual kind of married life would such persons find theirs! And how suitable to the rules of policy and self-love in the gentleman; for is not the wife, and are not her improvements, all his own?—Absolutely, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... richly, we went and lived in it, and kept a great many slaves of both sexes, with a very pretty equipage. In short, we began to live in a very agreeable manner, which did not last long, for at a year's end my wife fell sick and died. I might have married again, and lived honourably at Bagdad; but ambition to see the world put me upon other thoughts. I sold my house, and, after buying up several sorts of goods, went with a caravan to Persia; from Persia I travelled to Samarcande, and from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Mrs. Spragg had no ambition for herself—she seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her child—but she was passionately resolved that Undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that Mrs. Heeny, who crossed those sacred thresholds ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... demagogues of a party associated not with him, and could not know him. Why should he be an oppressor? Was it to serve the King, the whole tenor of whose life had been honorable and virtuous? Was it for himself that he should practice oppression? For what should he be an oppressor? Ambition could not prompt him, with a life ebbing slowly to a close, under the pressure of a disease acquired in the service of his country. He only looked forward to pass the remaining period of his life in the comfort of retirement, among his friends. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... establishing his position, was the agent of his father's policy. The Queen's latest favourite, the young Earl of Essex—a son-in-law of Walsingham, and stepson of Leicester—was no statesman in fact, though he fancied himself one. His ambition was unlimited; and while, as an anti-Spaniard, he was a leader of the party opposed to the Cecils, he was not less hotly jealous of his rival within that party, Walter Raleigh (at an earlier period, and also afterwards, associated with the Cecils), whose large conceptions he could ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... staples to the staff. Two boys, burning with zeal, started for the cupola to cut loose the flag. One of these, although a lad of eighteen, was a member of the Richmond Howitzers. Hoping to outstrip the other, he climbed hand over hand up the lightning-rod. Just as he reached the goal of his ambition, however, the staples securing the rod pulled out and the boy was left swaying back and forth in mid-air, while the crowd upon the top of the capitol and on the ground below looked on in horror. The lightning-rod was one of the old-fashioned sort, and more than an inch in diameter. One ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... that he should have been the principal subject of conversation between the good old lady and a grandson whom she so much wished to resemble him. It was, therefore, the first object of William's ambition, to see this wonderful uncle; and no sooner were his wishes accomplished, than he determined to leave no means untried to be allowed ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... next minute. Challoner was somewhat touched by her frank appeal, and though he saw that she was sufficiently ambitious to subordinate her affection to her desire for her lover's advancement, it was an ambition he could sympathize with. The woman was willing to make a sacrifice. For all that, he felt that he could not conscientiously ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... They gave me erections; and it was on top of the excitement thus engendered that one day I got a woman to do fellatio, as already mentioned. Moreover, since my illness, I found all my previous energy and ambition had gone. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lived among men and women who laughed at those simple virtues. The simple conditions of life are all that are worth striving for. They come to us fresh from Nature and from Nature's God. The complex are but concoctions of man after recipes in the devil's alchemy. So much gold, so much ambition, so much lust. Mix ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Danby, too, after giving himself numberless bruises, became so expert that he finally attained the summit of his ambition by hanging from the horizontal ladder and going hand over hand its entire length, though not without much puffing and panting and a frantic flourishing ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... them; he begins to feel he is ignorant—a state beyond the fickleness of the child—a characteristic state, corresponding to activity in the astral world. Then comes the state of preoccupation, or infatuation, Vikshipta, the state of the man possessed by an idea—love, ambition, or what not. He is no longer a confused youth, but a man with a clear aim, and an idea possesses him. It may be either the fixed idea of the madman, or the fixed idea which makes the hero or the saint; but in any case he is possessed by the idea. The quality of the idea, its truth or falsehood, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... temperament an undercurrent of ambition so strong as to cause her to receive their advances toward tender acquaintance with a freezing coldness, while at the same time it rendered her positively unhappy. She felt superior to her condition, and she longed to rise above it. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... was a man of generous chivalrous nature, who took large views of life, apt to be unfairly stigmatised as Radical in the narrow Tory reaction that prevailed in Scotland during the early years of the 19th century.[7] Devoid of literary ambition, he wrote much for his private pleasure, and his knowledge and library (rich in Persian and Arabic MSS.) were always placed freely at the service of his friends and correspondents, some of whom, such as Major C. Stewart and Mr. William Erskine, were more given ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... very certain that Mr. Pitt will never come into this, or any other administration: he is absolutely a cripple all the year, and in violent pain at least half of it. Such physical ills are great checks to two of the strongest passions to which human nature is liable, love and ambition. Though I cannot persuade myself that the present ministry can be long lived, I can as little imagine who or what can succeed them, 'telle est la-disette de sujets papables'. The Duke of swears that he will have Lord personally attacked in both Houses; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... an application blank to be filled out stating his qualifications for membership. It was necessary that the paper should be signed by his mother as evidence of her consent to his enlistment since he was not yet twenty-one years of age. She signed it readily enough, for she quite approved of his ambition, and she took a motherly pride in the evidences of patriotism that he was ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... appear to have existed at the same time in the mind of Jesus. The first one, however—that of a temporal revolution—does not appear to have impressed him much; he never regarded the earth or the riches of the earth, or material power, as worth caring for. He had no worldly ambition. Sometimes by a natural consequence, his great religious importance was in danger of being converted into mere social importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on questions affecting ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... can find employment for them, and arouse their hope and self-confidence and ambition, it is better than carloads of ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Dialogue, a Prologue and Epilogue, in short, the Trimming of his Comedy. By this time, Philo begins to think himself a great Man, and nothing less than the writing of a Play, can satisfie his towring Ambition; well, the Play is writ, the Players, upon the Recommendation of those that lick'd it over, like their Parts to a Fondness, and the Comedy, or Tragedy, being supported partly by its real Merit, but most powerfully by a Toasting, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... the remembrance of Jesus to slay every wicked thought; and the things that tempt us most, that most directly appeal to our worst sides, to our sense, our ambition, our pride, our distrust, our self-will, all these lose their power upon us, and are discovered in their emptiness and insignificance, when once this thought flashes across the mind—Jesus Christ is my Defence, and Jesus Christ is my Pattern and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... old pewterer, Burgum. Imagine the fair-haired rosy boy, the brightness of his extraordinary eyes increased by the covert mischief which urged him forward—fancy his presenting himself to Master Burgum, who, dull as his own pewter, had the ambition, which the cunning youth fostered, of being thought of an "ancient family"—fancy Chatterton in his poor-school dress presenting himself to this man, whose business, Chatterton's biographer, Mr. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... roots for himself, though knowing that the boy could plant and cultivate it if he were allowed a chance, and that such a privilege would be likely to develop his energies, and show of what stuff he was made. The notion was too common that a boy was all work, and had no ambition,—whatever work was in him must be got out of him, just as if he had been a horse or an ox. It was known that at some time he must take care of himself, yet he was not properly taught how to do so. The stimulant of letting him have a small ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the boy's ambition, Low the standard lies, Still they stand, and gaze—a sweeter ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural and unconquerable pride in them. It ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and again the Lord had to remind the apostles that the greatest of them all was he who most willingly served his fellows. They had been taught before; yet now, at this late and solemn hour, they were suffused with vain and selfish ambition. In sorrowful earnestness the Lord pleaded with them, asking who is greater, he that sits at the table, or he that serves? And the obvious reply He supplemented by the statement: "But I am among you as he that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Great. Gregory, as the son of a rich and distinguished Roman senator, enjoyed a good education in all the learning of the time. He entered public life and at an early age became prefect of Rome. But now, almost at the outset of his career, Gregory laid aside earthly ambition. He gave up his honorable position and spent the fortune, inherited from his father, in the foundation of monasteries and the relief of the poor. He himself became a monk, turned his palace at Rome into a monastery, and almost ruined his health by too great devotion to fasts and midnight vigils. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... makes friendship, but effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour, ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... no longer the ambition of monarchs which endangers peace; the passions of the people, its dissatisfaction with interior conditions and affairs, the strife of parties, and the intrigues of their leaders are the causes. A declaration of war, so serious in its consequences, is more easily carried by a large assembly, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Debby Stone, and board her, too, than pay the doctor. Ambition ain't strength. Home-work, and sewing-machine, and parish visiting—that's burning the candle at both ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of suffering on the part of subjects is to be found the ambition of their rulers, even if every actual case should be referred to some other cause. It is in this sense only that the inference is a necessary one. But then this is the only sense which formal logic is competent ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... came back to him with dust upon them. They were dry and crumbling like forsaken habitations. The son upon whom his complacent ambition had rested had turned his back upon the mansion of his father's hopes. The break might not be final; and in any event there would be much to live for; the fortunes of the family would be secure. But the zest of it all would be gone if John Weightman ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... meetings, and fulfilled all the duties of an academician. Each member took the name of some famous man of antiquity. Alcuin called himself Horace, another took the name of Augustin, a third of Pindar. Charlemagne, who knew the Psalms by heart, and who had an ambition to be, according to his conception, A KING AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART, received from his brother academicians the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... this good prince, the ambition of the count of Mountfort broke through all these regulations, and kindled a war, not only dangerous to Brittany, but to a great part of Europe. While Charles of Blois was soliciting at the court of France the investiture of the duchy, Mountfort was active in acquiring ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... bravest and best; and all ages and peoples have imagined or produced heroes as inevitably as they have made ploughs for turning the soil or ships for getting through the water or weapons with which to fight their enemies. To be some kind of a hero has been the ambition of spirited boys from the beginning of history; and if you want to know what the men and women of a country care for most, you must study their heroes. To the boy the hero stands for the highest success: to the grown man and woman he stands ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... had been seized by one of those unaccountable romantic fancies to which the young of the race are disposed. Though the sentiment was certainly far less dangerous than Fanny's passion for the, matine idol, since it revealed itself principally as a robust and wholly masculine ambition to follow in the footsteps of adventure, Gabriella fought it almost as fiercely as she had fought Fanny's ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... passions seem to arise out of the exertions of these two faculties of the animal sensorium. Pride, hope, joy, are the names of particular pleasures: shame, despair, sorrow, are the names of peculiar pains: and love, ambition, avarice, of particular desires: hatred, disgust, fear, anxiety, of particular aversions. Whilst the passion of anger includes the pain from a recent injury, and the aversion to the adversary that occasioned it. And compassion is the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... influence over the people, with an intrepid confidence in its own strength, which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions by means which reason prescribes, it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions." "The legislative department derives a superiority in our governments from other circumstances. Its constitutional powers being at once more extensive and less susceptible ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... note. It had been quite unexpected, and a month or two before, when his hopes had still been high in regard to Mary Masters, would have filled him with delight. It was the foible of his life to be esteemed a gentleman, and his poor ambition to be allowed to live among men of higher social standing than himself. Those dinners of Lord Rufford's at the Bush had been a special grief to him. The young lord had been always courteous to him in the field, and he had been able, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... all recent times charitable men, good men, enough to have saved Sodom, but not enough to save Society from the condemnation of driving this outcast race before it like sheep to the slaughter, as its members pressed on in pursuit of their several schemes of pleasure, riches or ambition, looking up to God for His approbation on their benevolence as they tossed a penny to some miserable beggar after they had stolen the earth from under his feet. How ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... reaching his Highness; that he meant to sacrifice the little army which covered this convoy, and to betray it as he had betrayed Tollemache at Brest; as he had betrayed every friend he had, to further his own schemes of avarice or ambition. But for the miraculous victory which Esmond's general won over an army six or seven times greater than his own, the siege of Lille must have been raised; and it must be remembered that our gallant little force was under the command of a general whom Marlborough hated, that he was furious ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... month Carol's ambition had clouded. Her hesitancy about becoming a teacher had returned. She was not, she worried, strong enough to endure the routine, and she could not picture herself standing before grinning children and pretending to be wise and decisive. But the desire ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the renowned physicist, came forward calmly, with outstretched hand. "So, you realized your great ambition, eh?" he said curiously. "But where would you be if I had not been able ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... managed with a secresy which secured them against detection. In the mean time their son, after receiving an excellent education, had been dubbed a knight, and learned from his aunt the name of his father, and the mystery of his birth. Inflamed with a noble ambition, he resolved instantly to set off for foreign countries and to surpass his sire in military glory. The next day he communicated the project to his aunt, who gave him a number of instructions for his future conduct; which, lest he should forget, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... before I can stir hand or foot, before I can get things even into my own hands—not that the people here realize this in the very least. Indeed they are intellectually dead; they seem to possess no ambition of ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... wanted it now. Every chance of success depended upon secrecy. The venture was so desperate that the General could not make up his mind to pick out the men himself, he called for volunteers. They came forward readily, incited, not only by courage and the desire to end the siege, but by ambition to be distinguished among their comrades who stood about them in hushed expectation. Every soldier off duty and able to crawl to the shore, and some who should not have attempted it were there. Among this crowd stood two women, scarcely apart from the others, and yet everywhere that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... little ones, working hard from morning till night.' 'I am a schoolboy, learning the lessons which are to fit me to make my way in the world.' 'I am a busy merchant, toiling hard to make money, and obliged to come to this quiet place to recruit my wearied energies.' 'I am an artist, with great ambition of future success.' 'I am an old man, who has weathered many a storm, but my work is done now; I am too old to fish, too tired to toil.' 'I am a gentleman of no occupation, idling comfortably through a busy world.' 'I'—and here he glanced at his own little Jack in the stern of the ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... lads of the river town by storm. With such splendid opportunities for boating, as were presented by the Mohunk River, of course they availed themselves of the chance to again enter into competition with those whose one ambition seemed to be to defeat Riverport. These lively encounters are set forth in the pages of the third volume, entitled "Fred ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... attached to the narrow meadows and rounded knolls of England; by all his imagination he was urged to the reverence of endless vales and measureless hills; nor could any scene be too contracted for his love, or too vast for his ambition. Hence, when he returned to English scenery after his first studies in Savoy and Dauphine, he was continually endeavoring to reconcile old fondnesses with new sublimities; and, as in Switzerland he chose rounded Alps for the love of Yorkshire, so in Yorkshire he exaggerated scale, in memory of Switzerland, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... father has left his affairs in such shape that it is necessary for me to stay here and straighten them out, why of course I shall stay. Otherwise——" He hesitated and laughed quietly, continuing: "Well, I also have an ambition, and if I am compelled to remain here it will have to be sacrificed. It is a rather humble ambition compared to yours," he laughed. "It is journalism," he continued, suddenly serious; "I want to own a newspaper. I am city editor now and in a few years——" He laughed. ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "I am human, and it would be disingenuous for me to pretend that I am not pleased by the fact that my name has been mentioned in connection with the bishopric. I can conscientiously affirm, however, that the good of the church is more dear to me than ambition. Even were it not, I hardly think that I am capable of being offended with any man who felt it his duty to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... old, my boy," said the King, "and too fond of my comfort; besides, I have no longer any ambition. When an actor once realises that he will never be a Charles Kean or a Macready, then come peace and the enjoyment of life. Now, with you it is different: you are, if I may say so in deep affection, young and foolish. Your project is a most hare-brained scheme. You are throwing away ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... smouldering question of the day; a thin spectacled young man with the receding forehead that so often denotes advanced opinions, was talking to a spectacled young woman with a similar type of forehead, and exceedingly untidy hair. It was her ambition in life to be taken for a Russian girl-student, and she had spent weeks of patient research in trying to find out exactly where you put the tea-leaves in a samovar. She had once been introduced to ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... without special incident. The boy, filled with that quenchless ambition to know, which characterizes the finest minds, entered eagerly upon his studies and faithfully observed his promises. If his tender soul warped and his fresh, receptive mind shriveled under the religious tutelage he received, no one ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, How spread their lures for him in vain, Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty than ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... and distinctive charm which we call "Style." It may be said, therefore, that the technical limitations of particular mediums impose what might properly be called natural conventions; and while misguided ambition may set these conventions aside to hammer out effects from an unwilling medium, the triumph is only mechanical; Art does not lie ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... my health to go to Eastbourne, and there I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Huxley, who, you will be glad to hear, is wonderfully well, and an ardent gardener! His present ambition is to ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... so carefully carry gave place to the foppish switches they so artfully carried in their younger days." Here the gilded doors of idleness and pleasure are ever ajar but they never lead to the halls of noble aims and the palaces of worthy ambition. Here the entrances are always crowded with that class of people whose motto is, "Things are good enough as they are," or "Eat, drink and be merry," or "We ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... both surprised and delighted with this unexpected support from Bough of the Oak. He knew enough of human nature to understand that a new-born ambition, that of talking against the great, mysterious chief, Peter, was at the bottom of this unexpected opposition; but with this he was pleased, rather than otherwise. An opposition that is founded in reason, may always ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... least thing that was seen in the disorders of so unjust a rebellion was the deaths that were caused, notwithstanding that they were numerous. There was seen vengeance clothed with zeal; ambition usurping the staff of justice; tyranny proclaiming liberty; treason applauded with adoration; and he who never knew the law of reason, making laws. There were seen thefts, conflagrations, profanations ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... was all too small a title for his ambition. He aimed at sovereignty on a large scale, and, Corsair as he was by nature, he wished for settled power almost as much as he delighted in adventure. In 1512 the opportunity he sought arrived. Three years before, the Mohammedan ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... never been worried with the wish, or ambition to be a head-hunter in the Dyak sense, but on this one occasion I did wish that it had been possible, without violating any law, or doing anything to a fellow-creature which I should not like done to myself, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... by all that Poland possesses of poetry; let us approach his sacred grave with due reverence! Let us adorn it with no artificial wreaths! Let us cast upon it no trivial crowns! Let us nobly elevate our thoughts before this consecrated shroud! Let us learn from him to repulse all but the highest ambition, let us try to concentrate our labor upon efforts which will leave more lasting effects than the vain leading of the fashions of the passing hour. Let us renounce the corrupt spirit of the times in which we live, with all ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... of fortune and of power, Can aught the joys you feel, with these compare? Can the full triumph of ambition's hour, When tempests ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... suitable for a bonfire. These were placed in a heap on some eminence near the house, and in the evening set fire to. The fires were called Samhnagan. There was one for each house, and it was an object of ambition who should have the biggest. Whole districts were brilliant with bonfires, and their glare across a Highland loch, and from many eminences, formed an exceedingly picturesque scene."[587] Like the Beltane ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... cannot attribute such a difference to the superior knowledge of the barbarians, we we must ascribe it to the influence of an established priesthood, which employed the motives of virtue as the instrument of ambition. [56] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a request to you for a young man, who was called, and eminently fitted for the ministry, but was tempted, by ambition, not to listen to the divine call, and obstacles had hedged his way somewhat. After I requested your prayers in his behalf, this temptation was removed, and nearly one hundred persons were converted in the church which ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... girl's ambition, A name in the world to make; 'Way back in her vanished youth-time, Gave up for ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... marry at all costs is every woman's dearest ambition till the grave closes over her. You and ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... to know how what seems a slight thing, a small selfishness, well, the inadvertence we spoke of lately, may punish the soul, may have a long and evil train of consequences. I was careless of that child, careful only of my ambition. I ground the child in the mortar of my ambition; is it not natural that I should suffer now? Does not your religion tell you that it is right? Answer ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the spit, it being impossible for him to undertake a boat voyage to Sierra Leone with so many wounded on his hands. It is true that he might have sent away the launch, with an officer and half a dozen hands, to Sierra Leone to summon assistance; but his ambition was not to be so easily satisfied. We had done splendid service in capturing two factories and destroying one of them—the second would also, of course, be destroyed when we abandoned it—but the loss of the Psyche was a very serious matter, which must be atoned for in some shape or ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... still an occasional distant cheer for the new leader. Given time, they might have organized an opposition. But Culvera drove them to instant decision. They faced the imperious will of a man who would stick at nothing to satisfy his ambition. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... relations was true in a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his friends, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... lime and cocoanut. The lazy folks lounged about, chewing sugar-cane and munching bananas, according to their pleasant custom. The men chattered, and the women prattled and played with their yellow and ebony babies. One saw no ambition, no proper pride, no obtrusive morality anywhere. Jefferson appeared to be a personage in these parts. He marched along saluting his many friends and smoking a cigar which the Doctor had given him. He stopped occasionally ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... worlds away from him—my husband, who ought to be the very closest, nearest, likest thing to me! Perhaps he is not happy, but at least he does not suffer, and he is always contented to live on as we are—no work, no friends, no ambition, no interest in life, except mere living. Oh, but it is hard! How long will it go on so, Hannah?" she broke out suddenly, with a ring of fervor in her voice. "Did you ever hear of any one living on and on and on, in a life like this? Could it go on ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... and characteristic way of advising the elimination of Helen's superficialities. It sank deep. Helen had no retort. Her ambition, as far as the West was concerned, had most assuredly not been for such a wild, unheard-of jaunt as this. But possibly the West—a living from day to day—was one succession of adventures, trials, tests, troubles, and achievements. To make a place for ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... study for Lady Macbeth. The whole story has its key in that verse where we read, "There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel, his wife, stirred up." As in the play, so in this Scripture, we have the unrestrained and ferocious ambition of the wife conspiring with the equally cruel, but less hardy ambition of the husband. When Macbeth had murdered sleep, when he could not screw his courage to the sticking-point, when his purpose looked green and pale, his wife stings him with taunts, scathes him with sarcasm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... its dream of a crown and distant throne, arose a passing vision of a life he had laid aside. There the plenty of yesterday melted in the paucity of to-day. There cringing cold had crept forlornly in and hunger had been no unexpected guest. There hope and ambition on their brows had ever borne the bruising thorns of defeat and failure. There wealth was a surprising stranger and poverty a daily friend. Friends! Friends! Yes, friends leal and true, a crust for one had meant a meal for all. Such had been real ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... discredit attached to the commission of them, and perhaps, in special cases, some kind of punishment imposed, as the most proper corrective of the evil. And yet, even in cases of carelessness and neglect of duty, it will generally be found much more easy to awaken ambition, and a desire to improve, in a child, by discovering, if possible, something good in his work, and commending that, as an encouragement to him to make greater exertion the next time, than to attempt to cure him of his negligence by calling ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... over ... I kept myself and my own feelings out of it." Behind those laconic words lay the weeks of struggle, of which even these good friends could have no idea! Weeks in which, while Mercer was deciding what he ought to do, Maurice, "keeping himself out of it," had put aside ambition and smothered taste, and thrown over, once for all, personal happiness. As a wrestler strips from his body all hampering things, so he had stripped from his mind every instinct which might interfere with a straight answer to a straight ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... out your mind, but the silliness of the music hall entertainment will only react upon you. You can tell a music hall frequenter, not by the words of his mouth so much as by the shuffle of his feet: his highest ambition seems to be to dance the double shuffle, and perhaps sing a few verses of some jingling rhyme. Out-door recreation is not so easily attainable, in the winter, as the time at your disposal is so short. In-door amusements must, to a great extent, ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... for any that might challenge—truly few princes could be so agreeable a host! And what artist could ask for further appreciation of his handiwork? Katy did not know that the proudest consummation of a New Yorker's ambition is to shake hands with a spaghetti chef or to receive a nod ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... republican tenets,—you will understand the sorrow of the Abbe de Sponde when he saw in his niece's salon the apostate priest, the renegade, the pervert, the heretic, that enemy of the Church, the guilty taker of the Constitutional oath. Du Bousquier, whose secret ambition was to lay down the law to the town, wished, as a first proof of his power, to reconcile the minister of Saint-Leonard with the rector of the parish, and he succeeded. His wife thought he had accomplished a work of peace where the immovable abbe saw only treachery. The bishop came to visit du Bousquier, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... father and brothers. Of my people I alone escaped. Since that time I have made fierce war upon the savages, have slain many, have sold their sons by dozens, and it is still the hope of vengeance which brings me here—neither ambition nor cupidity. But I love my country and all that I should care for riches would be to enable me to make a last effort against that distant congress which tyrannises over but cannot ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... reluctantly acknowledged that I had seen enough of a sailor's life; that on trial it did not realize my expectations; that if not a decided humbug, it was amazingly like one. With my health the buoyancy of my spirits departed. Hope and ambition no longer urged me with irresistible power to go forth and visit foreign lands, and traverse unknown seas like a knight errant of old in quest of adventures. While shivering with ague, and thinking of my wretched ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... children? As for the third, my occupation, I am prepared to give it up. It has served my turn, and after next week I shall have earned the amount that years ago I determined to earn. Thenceforth, set above the accidents of fortune, I propose to devote myself to higher aims, those of legitimate ambition. So far as my time would allow I have already taken some share in politics as a worker; I intend to continue in them as a ruler which I still have the health and ability to do. I mean to be one of the first men in this Empire, to ride to power over the heads of all the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... in it, and kept a great many slaves of both sexes, with a very pretty equipage. In short, we began to live in a very agreeable manner, which did not last long, for at a year's end my wife fell sick and died. I might have married again, and lived honourably at Bagdad; but ambition to see the world put me upon other thoughts. I sold my house, and, after buying up several sorts of goods, went with a caravan to Persia; from Persia I travelled to Samarcande, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... Walker; "well, if we had only the means I would certainly have her trained, for, since she has seen Mademoiselle B—— act, her great ambition seems to be to occupy a similar position." After further conversation it was agreed to place Margery under the care of Mrs. L——, with a view of becoming a professional actress; for, although Walker did not at all care for the stage or its concomitants, still he did not wish to throw any obstacles ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... interested him and that he was a man not readily interested in ordinary human beings. He had seen too many and judged too shrewdly and too swiftly to be easily held for very long. She had no ambition to hold him, and had never in her life consciously striven to attract or retain any man, but she was woman enough to find his obvious pleasure in her society agreeable. She thought that her genuine adoration of the garden he had made, of the land ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... consular authority (544;(67)); the dangerous threat of Scipio that, if the senate should refuse him the chief command in Africa, he would seek the sanction of the burgesses (549;(68)); the attempt of a man half crazy with ambition to extort from the burgesses, against the will of the government, a declaration of war in every respect unwarranted against the Rhodians (587;(69)); and the new constitutional axiom, that every state-treaty acquired validity only through the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... influence was the just belief in his complete independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his power. He had very little respect for the judgement of the multitude, and he cared ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... they are not sparingly met with in the volume) the possession of many of the highest qualities of the divine art? We regret to have some restriction to add to an admission we make so gladly. Miss Barrett is indeed a genuine poetess, of no common order; yet is she in danger of being spoiled by over-ambition; and of realising no greater or more final reputation than a hectical one, like Crashaw's. She has fancy, feeling, imagination, expression; but for want of some just equipoise or other, between the material and spiritual, she aims at flights which have done no ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... stationed at Chelsea, matriculated in the Boston University, where he studied for three years in the schools of Theology, Expression, Elocution, Voice Culture and Metaphysics, until from failing health he was compelled to change climate and sacrifice for a season at least his ambition for learning. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... ancient authority and the shattering of nations in Europe. That faithless, incalculable idealist Alexander, plans he knows not what of imperial glory in the Eastern and Western world. Rezanov is his servant, a man of ambition, perhaps in all favor at court, desirous of doing some great service for his master. He dreams of dominion in this sun-soaked land so lazily held in the lax grasp of Spain. He has come from failure. He had been to Japan with ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... get 'im to give up the life on account of the children. One night he got drunk and shot a perfectly 'elpless old man whose 'ouse he was robbing. That's wot they swung 'im for. I daresay that's why Dick 'as never took to drink. He says it takes the polish off from a chap's ambition." ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Laboriously, he had built up a name for conservatism which most of the town accepted, but secretly he had always been a gambler: Wall Street was his goal; to adventure there, as one of the great single-eyed Cyclopean man-eaters, his fond ambition; and he had conceived the distillery trust as a means to attain it; but the structure tumbled about his ears; other edifices of his crumbled at the same time; he found himself beset, his solvency endangered, and there was ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... sixteen years, I fear it must be admitted that I was unnaturally parsimonious, and a good deal of what schoolboys used to call a smug and a swatter. It really was curious, because I do not recall that I had any ambition to be actually rich. Mr. Smiles and his Self Help would have left me cold if I had read that classic. I indulged no Whittingtonian dreams of knighthood, mayoral chains, vast commercial or financial operations, or anything of that sort. The things that ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the poetical endowment. No woman, it is pretty generally understood, can resist the youth or man who addresses her in verse. The thought that she is the object of a poet's love is one which fills a woman's ambition more completely than all that wealth or office or social eminence can offer. Do the young millionnaires and the members of the General Court get letters from unknown ladies, every day, asking for their autographs and photographs? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... strong passions, was almost vehement in his paternal feelings—those two beings were the image of the poor dead woman, the remembrance of the only idyll which had softened a life wholly given over to ambition, and the calumnies circulated by his enemies, founded on the presence of his daughter in the archiepiscopal ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... then, as the undefeated general, he could take the chief command. There is no evidence that he had intrigued with Howe, but he thought that he could be the peacemaker between Great Britain and America, with untold possibilities of ambition in that role. He wrote of Washington at this time, to his friend Gates, as weak and "most damnably deficient." Nemesis, however, overtook him. In the end he had to retreat across the Hudson to northern New Jersey. Here ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... child is born again, and comes into a new infancy—the infancy of manhood and womanhood. Here a new life opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives satisfaction no longer. Love takes new and deeper channels. Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher objects. Fresh motives address the soul, and urge it into new enterprises. Great cares and responsibilities settle slowly down upon its shoulders, and it braces itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... mother's illness came the matter of the railroad, and"—he hesitated—"Dermott McDermott. You see, Katrine, you had stirred something in my nature I never knew before-ambition! That was part, but the desolation that followed your out-going made action necessary. Well, the new railroad was to be constructed through the plantation, and I worked with all the energy I could to forget. You see what you did for me, Katrine! And at every turn, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... regarded as sacred trusts the tasks of saving women and children from massacre, of suppressing fanatical and cruel tyranny, of preventing intolerable wrong. The Church with confident consistency has rightly sanctioned and sanctified their heroic enterprises. While condemning wars of ambition, conquest, or revenge, she has taught that those who take arms to defend from murderous violence the weak and helpless, to maintain the priceless heritage of freedom, and to vindicate the majesty of law, may with humble assurance ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... replaced by the appointment and promotion of men who showed themselves possessed of the necessary qualifications. In a few instances promotion was declined by the individual. Various reasons were given for this step. Some individuals lacked ambition, others were reluctant to accept responsibility, and again others preferred to retain the close company of the friends of their section—promotion resulting in a mild form of aloofness and isolation, a condition which the exercise of ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... said he. "Not even a corporal. You see, I've learned to be a private of sorts, and that satisfies my ambition." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... new adventure to serve his ambition in Italy, but his army is broken to pieces at Pollentia by the armies in Italy—under a general, by the way, as barbaric in mere descent as was Alaric, but, like Alaric, wholly Roman in ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... I do not aspire to the presumptuous hope that any one may say "Well, I see this man Cobb is doing for Miss Ashford's second book what Barrie did for her first one." I have no such ambition. A minnow always errs when he undertakes to swim in the company of a whale. If he tries to swim alongside he is unnoticed; if he swims in the wake he is swamped. He makes other minnows jealous or contemptuous as the case may be, and he is properly ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... as natural as her prejudices; she believed that marriage was the close of female ambition, and marrying her children was the only innovation to be permitted. Certain accomplishments she thought due to woman, but none of them must become masculine in prosecution; a professional woman she shrank from as from an infidel or an abolitionist; reading was meritorious up to an orthodox point, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... their limitations, 78; disputed authorship of poems, 79-80. Commissioned to intercept the Plate Fleet; replaced by Sir Richard Grenville, 82; narrative of Grenville's fight with the Spaniards, 84; invective against Spanish ambition and cruelty, 85; threatened duel with Lord Howard of Effingham, 84; equips an expedition to avenge the Revenge, 86; sails, and is superseded by Burgh and Frobisher, 87. Disgrace and imprisonment, 88; the alleged intrigue with Elizabeth Throckmorton, 89; difficulties ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... in an enterprise to reach the stars, would he?" When Holden shook his head, Cochrane said zestfully, "I'd guess that the peak of his ambition would be to have the credit for it if it worked, but he wouldn't risk being associated with it until ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no higher ambition than to love my fellow-man—and woman, and mind my own business; but his reply has invariably been, "I'm Dr. Tarr, and my system prevails in this lunatic asylum!" I recognize the logic of his argument all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... patient, and ever courageous, he unites to a complete technical knowledge a marvellous intuition of the beautiful, and his treasures are for him pride, bliss, and life. There is no show in this case, no desire for show, no ambition of the despicable shoddy-genteel sort—a more than powerful creation of fiction. A strikingly opposite career of selfishness is suggested by the fairly well-known story of Don Vincente, the friar bookseller of Barcelona, who, in order to obtain a volume which a rival bookseller, Paxtot, had secured ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... height of their ambition the French were kept aloof by the deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerful savages in the New World. The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white settlers were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all belonged to one or another of three great stocks or families. ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... uniting and union was becoming organization—and neither geographical remoteness nor unwieldiness of number nor local interests and differences were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network—while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of Europe, in Italy the ancient classic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... speechmaking," said Warde, "but I want to put one thing to you as strongly as a man may. I have always wished to be master of the Manor. Some men may think mine a small ambition. Master of a house at Harrow? Nothing big about that. Perhaps not. But I think it big. And it is big—for me. Understand that I'm in love with my job—head over heels. I'd sooner be master of the Manor than ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... I took a meridian altitude,' Scott wrote, 'and to my delight found the latitude to be 80 deg. 1'. All our charts of the Antarctic region show a plain white circle beyond the eightieth parallel... It has always been our ambition to get inside that white [Page 113] space, and now we are there the space can no longer be a blank; this compensates for ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... his native city, and, when yet a mere lad, made his way to Paris in the suite of the duke of Guise. Once in Paris his way was open. Gifted with a quick wit, a total absence of principle or honor, but of insatiable ambition, he made his way from one position to another, and at length had been so prominent as a composer of dance music, and leader of the king's violins, as to have opportunity to distinguish himself by composing the music for ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... but studied him unobtrusively, as a man concerning whom he specially desired to know more. Hardcastle proved himself well educated; indeed, his reading, studiously pursued, and his intellectual attainments, developed by hard work and ambition, far ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... your own roundabout way? Suppose I say, 'Pray don't ask me how I propose inflaming Mr. Armadale and extinguishing Miss Milroy; the question is so shockingly abrupt I really can't answer it. Ask me, instead, if it is the modest ambition of my life to become Miss Milroy's governess?' Yes, if you please, Mrs. Oldershaw, and if you will assist me by becoming ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... author adds a spirit, freshness, delicacy, all his own." Kinglake, in turn, reviewed "The Crescent and the Cross" in an article called "The French Lake." From a cordial notice of the book he passes to a history of French ambition in the Levant. It was Bonaparte's fixed idea to become an Oriental conqueror—a second Alexander: Egypt in his grasp, he would pass on to India. He sought alliance against the English with Tippoo Saib, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... (Purthi Nerayn in Kirkpatrick) was a person of insatiable ambition, sound judgment, great courage, and unceasing activity. Kind and liberal, especially in promises to his friends and dependants, he was regardless of faith to strangers, and of humanity to his enemies, that is, to all who ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... to get your letter. Am glad you are playing football. I should be very sorry to see either you or Ted devoting most of your attention to athletics, and I haven't got any special ambition to see you shine overmuch in athletics at college, at least (if you go there), because I think it tends to take up too much time; but I do like to feel that you are manly and able to hold your own in rough, hardy sports. I would rather have a boy ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... regard to the last" (my version), says the Reviewer (p.185), and verily I thank him therefor. Laudari ab illaudato has never been my ambition. A writer so learned and so disinterested could hurt my feelings and mortify my pride only by approving me and praising me. Nor have I any desire to be exalted in the pages of the Edinburgh, so famous for its incartades of old. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... forgot his prejudices in favour of classic architecture as he looked on the magnificent cathedral. At Florence he spent some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed with the pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, fearing both parties, and loving neither, had determined to hide in an Italian retreat talents and accomplishments which, if they had been united with fixed principles and civil courage, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Frenchmen and a thousand millions of francs, besides the indemnities, which amounted to fifteen hundred millions more. No language of denunciation could be stronger than that which went forth from the mouth of the whole nation in view of Napoleon's selfishness and ambition. But one voice was listened to, and that was the cry for vengeance; prudence, moderation, and justice were alike disregarded. All attempts to stem the tide of ultra-royalist violence were in vain. The king was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... and purify the life of humanity. His method of bringing about this {138} good is the contagion of the good life. His motive is the sense of the need of men. And His goal is the establishment of the kingdom of love—a kingdom in which all the problems of ambition, wealth, and the relationships of the family, of the industrial sphere, and of the state, are ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... not the desire after goodness, the restlessness and dissatisfaction with every present good, the brave ambition that says, 'Forgetting the things that are behind, I reach forth unto the things that are before,' there is nothing in a man to which God's grace can attach itself. God cannot make you better if ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... face came before me as I had learned to know it from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he keep her in his heart? My grandmother's ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... depths and shoals of honor— Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it. Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels: how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by't? Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty: Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... been "troublesome to heretics," he said, and he had "done it with a little ambition;" for "he so hated this kind of men, that he would be the sorest enemy that they could have, if they would not repent."—More's ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... is. For this is a song of the heart rather than of the highway. Down—safe, that is, from the steep and slippery places of self-estimation, self-exaltation, self-satisfaction. Down—so as to be delivered from all ambition and emulation and envy. Down, and safe, thank God, from all pride, all high- mindedness, and all stout-heartedness. Down from the hard and cruel hills, and buried deep out of sight among those meadows where that herb grows ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... stretched out his arm toward the north and west, and murmured that it was all his. He would be the ruler of an empire half the size of Europe. The scattered and miserable Texans could set no bounds to his ambition. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... deceived. But what Baroudi desired she could give. It seemed to her to-night indeed that she was born to give just what he desired. She made no mistake about herself. And he could give to her exactly what she wanted. So she thought now. For, since the long day in the mountains, her old ambition seemed to have died, to have been slain, and, with its death, had suddenly grown more fierce within her the governing love, or governing greed, for material things-for money, jewels, lovely bibelots, for ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... who were too entirely absorbed in their individual speculations, fears and aims, to spare even a glance at that solitary young mariner, who saw the last headland fade from view, and found herself, with no pilot but ambition, drifting rapidly out on the great, unknown, treacherous Sea of Life, strewn with mournful human wrecks, whom the charts and buoys of six thousand years of navigation could not guide to a haven of usefulness and peace. Interminable ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... criticise; that holds Inquisitive attention, while I read. Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break: What is it, but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns? Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge, That tempts ambition. 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 dext'rous jerk, soon twists him And wins them, but to lose them in his turn. Here rills of oily eloquence ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... this question of marriage before God. Had she done so she would have been saved from making a mistake, which was to leave its mark upon the whole of her future life. Her heart drew her one way, and her ambition another. Undoubtedly Tom, with his warm heart and openly expressed devotion, was the man she loved the best of the many who had paid her attention; but she might have to wait for him for years, whilst, if Dixon chose to offer it, ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... me, alas! total strangers. From my earliest years I have been filled with the joyous impulse of song, but never were ears more false to the one true pitch than mine, never was voice less commensurate with ambition. My youthful dreams, when they were not of foot-ball or swimming, were all of the Sirens, and I deemed Ulysses, if prudent, none the less a lack-sentiment sort of hero, not inspiring to know, because he stopped his ears to their song. The jeers ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... casting a triumphant glance at Mrs. Habersham, admitted that she had been cherishing just such an ambition, looking only the more pleased at the unrestrained horror and surprise manifested ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... city and continued in Paris, in the Lycee Louis le Grand, where in the class of philosophy he came under Professor Emile Charles, by whose original and profound though decidedly sad way of thinking he was powerfully influenced. His own ambition then was to become a teacher in the University of France, an ambition which seemed unlikely to be ever realized, as he failed to secure admission to the celebrated Ecole Normale Superieure, in the competitive examination which leads up to that school. Strangely enough, about fifteen years later ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the family name. To other people he was a luckless sort of fellow, who had sown his wild oats early, and met disappointment at every turn. It was passed about, too, that there was a romance in his life which had changed and embittered it. Certain it is, he suddenly seemed to lose all ambition and energy. Instead of making the brilliant lawyer his friends expected, he had come down at last to be the keeper of the toll-gate on a ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... disposition was joyous, but with the feverish joy of a highly-strung, nervous organization. He was a great student from boyhood; and severe application undermined a system that was never robust, and that soon became hopelessly diseased. Illness, accompanied with sharp pain, clipped the wings of his ambition, obliged him to forego preferment, and deepened the hopelessness that hung over his expectations. His hunger for love could not be satisfied, for his physical infirmity rendered a union undesirable, even if possible, while a craving ideality soon transcended any visible object ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... It was a splendid ambition for Alsace—the eternal field of battle—to wish to inaugurate these European Olympian games. But in spite of good intentions, this meeting of nations resulted in a fight, on musical ground, between two civilisations and two arts—French art and German art. For these ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the most part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able to make no stand against the general corruption of the age, because- -at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom— they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and luxury, intrigue and party spirit, and had become the flatterers of fine ladies, "silly women laden with sins, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." Such a state of things not only drove poor creatures into the desert, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... what I think, what I am, what interests I may have, what intellect, what of human desire, hope, fear, ambition animates me; do you? You don't care whether I am ignorant or educated, bad or good, ill or well—as long as it does not affect my posing for you; whether I am happy or ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... him on from success to success. Mrs. Hitchcock still slurred the present participle and indulged in other idiomatic freedoms that endeared her to Sommers. These two, plainly, were not of the generation that is tainted by ambition. Their story was too well known, from the boarding-house struggle to this sprawling stone house, to be worth the varnishing. Indeed, they would not tolerate any such detractions from their well-earned reputation. The ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Huang is more to literature than to history. Of his life and times the poets are faithful recorders. Tu Fu in 'The Old Man of Shao-Ling' leaves us this memory of his peaceful days passed in the capital, before the ambition of the Turkic general An Lu-shan had driven his master into exile in far Ssuch'uan. The poet himself is speaking in the character of a lonely old man, wandering slowly down the winding banks ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... heaven, who 'pleased not Himself,' whose life was all one long service and sacrifice for men, whose joys were not fed by earthly possessions or delights. How should they have a sense of community of aims with grovelling hearts that cling to wealth or ambition, that are not at peace with God, and have no holdfasts beyond this 'bank and shoal of time'? A man who has drunk into the spirit of Christ's life is thereby necessarily thrown out ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... an avid mother. Mr. Bembridge knew that the boy was no good at work, wanted to say something nice about him, and had once noticed him playing some absurd but very ordinary boyish prank. On this supposed hint of character the master spoke. Mrs. Lane listened. Eustace acted. A sudden ambition stirred within him. To be known, talked about, considered, perhaps even wondered at—was not that a glory? Such a glory came to the greatly talented—to the mightily industrious. Men earned it by labour, by intensity, insensibility to fatigue, the "roughing it" of the mind. ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... supernatural intervention of the Church. The practice of witchcraft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to the Evil One, for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of superhuman power, to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's avarice, ambition, or ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... the temples and above the eyes; indisposition to exercise; difficulty of thinking or reasoning, or concentrating the mind upon any subject; lassitude; indifference respecting business, lack of ambition or energy; obstruction of nasal passages; discharges voluntarily falling into the throat, sometimes profuse, watery, acrid, thick and tenacious, mucous, purulent, muco-purulent, bloody, concrete blood and pus, putrid, offensive, etc. In others, a dryness of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
