"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 |
