"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to do it? After a time you would become weary, for the burden would be too heavy, however great your devotion or profound your tenderness, to see my real position and my hopes, and, descending into the future, to see my ruin. You know I am ambitious without having ever compassed the scope of this ambition, and of the hopes, dreams if you like, on which it rests. Understand that these dreams are on the eve of being realized; two months more, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... your own terms. There! You won't take it yet! Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! You are such free and independent woters, and I am so proud of you,—you are such a noble and enlightened constituency, and I am so ambitious of the honour and dignity of being your member, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of the human mind can soar,—that I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll throw you in all the public-houses ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... friends was thus hewing his way to knighthood by deeds of "dering do," the other was no less steadily persevering in the path which led to the object of his desire. The less ambitious object, as the ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... circumstances, he might have made what is generally termed a great man, a patriot, or a conqueror. As it was, the very qualities which might then have pushed him on to fortune and renown were the cause of his ruin. The war over, he fell into evil courses; for his wild heart and ambitious spirit could not brook the sober and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... wish we warfare? wherefore welcome won Xerxes, Nantippus, Navier, Xenophon? Yield, ye young Yaghier yeomen, yield your yell! Zimmerman's, Zoroaster's, Zeno's zeal Again attract; arts against arms appeal. All, all ambitious aims, avaunt, away! Et ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... lowest rank, to the dignity, or at least to the emoluments, of Grand Almoner of France, loaded him with benefices, and obtained for him the hat of a cardinal; and although he was too cautious to repose in the ambitious Balue the unbounded power and trust which Henry placed in Wolsey, yet he was more influenced by him than by any other of his avowed counsellors. The Cardinal, accordingly, had not escaped the error incidental to those who are suddenly raised to power from an obscure ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... though to herself, "something about everything. That being out of the question, I should like to know everything about something. That also being out of the question, for third choice I should like to know something about something. I am not too ambitious, am I?" ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... violence as a stepping-stone to power, and then despotic violence as a necessity entailed upon him by its possession. They were naturally placed, or they placed themselves, in the regular ways and under the permanent conditions of government. William was an ambitious prince. It is puerile to believe that, up to the moment of the appeal sent to him from London in 1688, he had been insensible to the desire of ascending the throne of England, or ignorant of the schemes long going on to raise him to it. William followed the progress of these ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... who favoured the people at the time of the Ciompi Tumult. But he adopted the same popular policy. To his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo he bequeathed on his deathbed the rule that they should invariably adhere to the cause of the multitude, found their influence on that, and avoid the arts of factious and ambitious leaders. In his own life he had pursued this course of conduct, acquiring a reputation for civic moderation and impartiality that endeared him to the people and stood his children in good stead. Early in his youth Giovanni ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... whom he attacked: she was one of the Handsomest women in town, though then little known at court: so much of the coquette as to discourage no one; and so great was her desire of appearing magnificently, that she was ambitious to vie with those of the greatest fortunes, though unable to support the expense. All this suited the Chevalier de Grammont; therefore, without trifling away his time in useless ceremonies, he applied to her porter for admittance, and chose one ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... hasty entanglement had limited his possibilities of happiness in one direction, and he felt that there was a certain grandeur in the recompense of working out his defeated instincts through the ambitious medium of his noble art. Had not Pharaohs chosen it to proclaim their longings for immortality, Caesars their passion for pomp and luxury, and the priesthood to symbolize their conceptions of the heavenly mansions? His dreams were on a grand scale; such, after all, are the best possessions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Latin and less Greek" which Ben Jonson accords to him. What was "small" learning in the eyes of such a scholar as Jonson, may yet have been something handsome in itself; and his remark may fairly imply that the Poet had at least the regular free-school education of the time. Honourably ambitious, as his father seems to have been, of being somebody, it is not unlikely that he may have prized learning the more for being himself without it. William was his oldest son; when his tide of fortune began to ebb, the Poet was in his fourteenth year, and, from his native qualities ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... head nearly all eye, one striped claw grasping a bundle of arrows, and the other the American flag, served for the sign, and was elevated upon a tall hickory sapling, with the ambitious legend of "Eagle Hotel; by A. Pritchard," flaunting in a scroll from the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the rug. "I don't know what you mean by a 'note,'" she commented, with majestic indignation. "I have not lived in South Denboro, and perhaps my understanding of English is defective. But marriages among cultivated people, society people, intelligent, ambitious people are, or should be, the result of thought ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in your cage so long—mais pour le coup il faut attendre." [But now you must have patience.] It is not probable the members he named could have such designs, but Dumont once held the same language to me; and it is mortifying to hear these miscreants suppose, that factious or ambitious men, because they chance to possess talents, can make revolutions in England as they have done ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... too much time for writing. The several hours' continuous nervous tension sometimes exacted by too ambitious teachers does the average child more harm than the examination ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... may be called the language of the game and a knowledge of it is absolutely indispensable to every one who is himself ambitious of excelling, or who is desirous of appreciating the excellencies ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... poison of some aeons should distil. There was need of savagery to say what she proposed to say. The voice of training, of civilization, of unselfishness, of friendship raised a protest. Wait then for a moment. Wait until the bitterness of an ambitious and unrounded life could formulate this evil impulse. Wait, till Mary Connynge could summon treachery enough to slay her friend. And yet, wait only until the primitive soul of Mary Connynge should become altogether imperative in its demands! For after all, was not ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour, and overwhelmed with invective ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... anxiety your beating, ambitious heart panted for the admiration of an attentive auditory, when you first ventured to harangue in public! With far less hope and fear (great as yours were) did you first address a crowded court, and thirst for its approbation on your efforts, than Agnes sighed for your approbation when she took ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... at once to offer his congratulations to Alexander, and called also upon Draga. It has even been suggested that Russia arranged the affair, and that Draga was her tool. This is, however, improbable. It was more likely the achievement of an ambitious and most foolish woman. But that Russia jumped at it as the very best means of compassing Alexander's ruin cannot be doubted, for no less a person than the Tsar accepted the post of Kum (Godfather) at the wedding, thus publicly announcing ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... terms united into a sentence so that one is affirmed of the other become a proposition. Propositions, like terms, may be either specific or general. "Napoleon was ambitious" is a specific proposition; "Politicians are ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... sets them to watch their words and their ways, and makes them tie themselves up from all hectoring liberty—to choose that religion, and to cleave to it to the end, will make a young man the ridicule still of all the brave spirits round about him. Ambitious young men get promotion and reward every day among us for desertions and apostasies in religion, for which, if they had been guilty of the like in war, they would have been shot. 'And so you are a Free Churchman, I am told.' That was all that was said. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... My most ambitious expectations were more than realised by the honour conferred on me at the moment when I ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... business of government was managed by the council of state. In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar course. Living like his predecessors in effeminacy and sloth, the king was driven from the throne by an ambitious adventurer named Mack, who from a fisherman had risen to be Grand Mandarin. But the king's brother Tring put down the usurper and restored the king, retaining, however, for himself and his descendants the dignity of general of all the forces. Thenceforward the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cannot deny their authenticity, nor is it my wish to do so. I will, however, subjoin one which appears to me to differ a little from the rest. It is less remarkable for exaggerated expressions of love, and a singularly ambitious and affected style, than most of the correspondence here alluded to. Bonaparte is announcing the victory ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and even at five-and-forty no one had as yet hinted at Beau Brummel though by that time men as well as women frequently described to each other the cut and colour of the garments he wore, and tailors besought him to honour them with crumbs of his patronage in the ambitious hope that they might mention him as a client. And the simple fact that he appeared in a certain colour or cut set it at once on its way to become a fashion to be seized upon, worn and exaggerated until it was dropped suddenly by its originator and lost in the oblivion of cheap imitations and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not remarkable for talent, but a pleasant companion enough, with plenty of common sense. Well, "he would be an actor"—it was his own fancy to have a part, and, as he was "one of us," we could not well refuse him. We gave him an easy one, for he was not vain of his own powers, or ambitious of theatrical distinction; so he was to be "second fellow"—one of Tony's pot-companions. He had but two lines to speak; but, from the very first time I heard him read them, I set him down as a hopeless case. He read them as if he had just learned to spell the words; when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... is, publicly, or privately. But, in deed and in truth, she was mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots, mother of those that, with all their show and outside of religion, were adulterated and gone from the spirit, nature, and life of Christ, and grown vain, worldly, ambitious, covetous, cruel, &c. which are the fruits of the flesh, and ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... Then the ambitious vicar must build almshouses for decayed true men in their old age close to the manse, that he might keep and feed them, as well as lodge them. And his money being gone, he asked Margaret for a few thousand bricks and just took off his coat and turned builder; and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... reorganizing the business of his paper. It was, besides, the long-desired moment, for which all his years at Oxford had been a training and a consecration; it was that supreme, that nuptial moment in which an ambitious man embraces for ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... An ambitious minister, listening attentively to the warning against Krovitch, determined to put a quietus on that province, which once and for all time would blight her hopes of independence. He wired many questions and voluminous suggestions to his agent in Paris, Casper Haupt, who was a sub-chief ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... direct imitation. The rage for what is called 'originality' is pushed to such a length in these days that even children are not considered promising, unless they attempt things preposterous and unparalleled. From his earliest hour, the ambitious person is told that to make a road where none has walked before, to do easily what it is impossible for others to do at all, to create new forms of thought and expression, are the only recipes for genius; and in trying to ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... merchant and shipowner there. He was graduated at West Point; was a modest, truthful, industrious, studious man, with the instincts of a soldier. He was wounded at New Market, or Glendale, in the Peninsula campaign (1862). He was commanding in person, and ambitious to succeed, prudent, yet obstinate, and when aroused showed a fierce temper; yet he was, in general, just. On the third day after he assumed command of the army its advance corps opened the battle of Gettysburg. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... and now you's 'B,' so you're my A B, he says, write yourself down that, he says, the bad man, with his jokes!—Berry went to service." Mrs. Berry's softness came upon her. "So I tell ye, Berry went to service. He left the wife of his bosom forlorn and he went to service; because he were allays an ambitious man, and wasn't, so to speak, happy out of his uniform—which was his livery—not even in my arms: and he let me know it. He got among them kitchen sluts, which was my mournin' ready made, and worse than a widow's cap to me, which is no shame to wear, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... discovered, would, it was thought, have separated them for ever. Herr Lehfeldt's sternness, no less than his superior position, seemed an invincible obstacle, and the good mother, although doting upon her only daughter, was led by the very intensity of her affection to form ambitious hopes of her daughter's future. It was barely possible that some turn in events might one day yield an opening for their consent; but meanwhile prudence dictated secrecy, in order to avert the most ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... many difficulties in the way; as when parents are too ambitious, or when sons are obstinate and self-willed, or when both are antagonistic to each other. If, as is not infrequently the case, a youth has no particular taste for any profession, and shows no very obvious capacity for anything, is it not a pretty strong indication ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... able to supplement her knowledge to an extent that seemed to justify them in attempting the adventure,—not to mention the fact that Don Miguel (such was the ardor of his sentiment for Grace) would, had she desired it, have gone with her into a fiery furnace or a den of lions. Grace, who was ambitious as well as romantic, and who longed for the power and independence that wealth would give, was all alight with the idea of capturing the hoard of Montezuma: her social position would be altered at a stroke, and the world would ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... it glowed in its hidden heart, and strove for a vent. It was not lighted without a purpose. The peasant had a son, to whom the flame had been passed on; for he aimed at the priesthood. This has ever been a refuge of ambitious minds that cannot rise by any other means above the dullness of the peasant's life, which is the more endurable the more the man is able to place himself upon the animal level of his plodding ox. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... of Savage, and the mingled fire, rudeness, pride, meanness, and ferocity of his character[503], concur in making it credible that he was fit to plan and carry on an ambitious and daring scheme of imposture, similar instances of which have not been wanting in higher spheres, in the history of different countries, and have had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... but when she fights for her child she becomes a raving Megaera. In the same way the Faith—the consoler of hearts—turns to a raging wild-beast when it stoops to become religious partisanship. If you would really understand Christianity you must look neither down to the deluded masses, and those ambitious worldlings who only use it as a means to an end by inflaming their baser passions, nor up to the throne, where power translates the impulse of a disastrous moment into sinister deeds. If you want to know what true and pure Christianity is, look into our homes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the late afternoon I was sketching the mountains with the houses below, so as to give an idea of the great height of the overshadowing cliffs. It was rather too ambitious a sketch. I sat out on the plain right away from ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... Ralph wear a puzzled frown as he heard Bud make this significant remark. He must have wondered more than ever what it could possibly be that the other had conceived this time. On other occasions his efforts, while ambitious, had ended in smoke, and the rest of the boys often quizzed poor Bud most unmercifully on account of his shortcomings. But then, all great inventors must make a beginning. It is not expected that genius can ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... physical geographer. It is not affirming too much to say that in many difficult questions in which the mezzo termine proposed by Austria has been acceded to by the other powers, the solution has been due as much to the sagacity of the individual, as to the less ambitious policy ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... which are now at hand for the use of the founders of a library, we may be allowed to go back somewhat in time, and consider how our predecessors treated this same subject, and we can then conclude the present Introduction with a consideration of the less ambitious attempts to instruct the book collector which may be found ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... I know what you are thinking. I did like it at first, but I was younger then, and more ambitious. You know, Mr. Griffin, I find that the priesthood is something like a river. The farther you go from the source the deeper and wider it gets; and it's at its best as it nears the ocean. Even when it empties into ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... skins, sewed neatly together with thread of sinews, was all the young mother wore. Thus hanging from the shoulder and fully encircling her, it reached from the waist to about half way down between the hips and the knees. It was as delightful a gown as ever was contrived by ambitious modiste or mincing male designer in these modern times. It fitted with a free and easy looseness and its colors were such as blended smoothly and kindly with the complexion of its wearer. The fur of the wolverine was a mixed black and white, but neither black ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of all the male members of the clan, from boyhood to old age. He is most successful in obtaining clan and tribal promotion who is most useful to the clan and the tribe. In this manner all of the ambitious are stimulated, and this incentive to industry is ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... put an end to the chapter without observing that such is the ambitious temper of beauty, that it may always apply to itself that ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Smook thru' a Shevvield Chimla, will show that the Sheffield "blade" is doing his best to carry on the tradition set by Abel Bywater eighty years ago. Airedale still has its poets, among the most ambitious of whom is Mr. Malham-Dembleby, who published in 1912 a volume of verse entitled, Original Tales and Ballads in the Yorkshire Dialect. Mr. F. J. Newboult has deservedly won fame as a prosewriter in dialect; his dialect sketches which have for some years appeared in The Yorkshire Observer are full ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... daughter's "walking members," though she went so far as to allow the maiden to appear before them clad only in a flowing robe of gossamer silk. The possible danger of losing her opportunity to become Queen of France proved, however, beyond the ambitious young lady's powers of endurance, and to the horror of her haughty mother and the delight of the foreign emissaries, the Princess Clementia then and there doffed her silken robes and appeared before all in the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Francis, the king, became very jealous of the boundless popularity and enormous power acquired by this ambitious house. Upon his dying bed he warned his son of the dangerous rivalry to which the Guises had attained, and enjoined it upon him to curb their ambition by admitting none of the princes of that house to a share in the government; but as soon as King Francis was consigned to his tomb, Henry II., ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Clair, was now completed. She had kept the writing of it a profound secret, and one morning the young author, full of ambitious dreams, borrowed the cook's market-bonnet and cloak and sallied out to seek her fortune. Before going far she saw over a shop-door "T. Smith, Printer and Bookseller," and ventured in. It was some minutes before T. Smith made his appearance, and when he did so he had a razor in one hand, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and life to secure possession of a coveted body for his own enjoyment, or else where he takes his own life because he feels lonely after having failed to secure the desired union. These actions are no index of love, for they "may coexist with the cruelest treatment" of the coveted woman. Very ambitious persons or misers may commit suicide after losing honor ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Germany, and it is not surprising, for, in spite of being autocratic to the last degree, he is honest, courageous, ambitious, hard working, and, withal, a thorough German, being intensely patriotic. Indeed, if the people of the Fatherland had the right to vote for a sovereign, they would undoubtedly choose the present constitutional ruler, for, while the virtues we have named may seem commonplace, they ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... can sooth and smile, Profess, and sometimes weep:— No, he'll betray him, as he did thy Brother; Richard the Fourth was thus deluded by him. No, let him swear and promise what he will, They are but steps to his own ambitious End; And only makes the Fool, thy credulous Husband, A silly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... unfortunate for my country already, and which may become still more so, when he uttered this noble sentiment—'My country is more powerful than yours, Senor Montefalderon,' he said, 'and in this it has been more favoured by God. You have suffered from ambitious rulers, and from military rule, while we have been advancing under the arts of peace, favoured by a most beneficent Providence. As for this war, I know but little about it, though I dare say the Mexican government may have been wrong ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... beautiful pleasure-grounds, its ornamented lawns, and its stately avenues, he felt that there was something worth making a struggle for, even at the expense of conscience, when he contemplated, with the cravings of an ambitious heart, the spirit of rich and deep repose in which the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... seven bridges, because there you may see farthest along the straight highway from the crown of the bridges, and number the ingenuous youth as on hunters they pace, or in hack or in dogcart or tandem they dash along to the "Meet." Arrived there, if the fox does get away—if no ambitious youngster heads him back—if no steeplechasing lot ride over the scent and before the hounds, to the destruction of sport and the master's temper—why then you will see a fiery charge at fences that will ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... logs in the most primitive style of the frontier, and, with a single exception, were now deserted by their occupants, who had retreated for safety to the stockade of the Fort. The single exception was the larger and more ambitious dwelling standing on the north bank of the river, occupied by John Kinzie and his family, himself an old-time Indian trader, whose honesty and long dealing with the savages had made him confident of their friendship and fidelity. At one time, however, so threatening ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... haste and anger, but for weeks Patricia had been so far behind the others of her class, that she believed that any day Mrs. Marvin would send her home with a letter stating that she had been neglecting study, and must give up her place to some ambitious pupil. Patricia preferred to go of her own choice, so she rushed to her room, and began ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... back—ever back—though courageously resisting, went the Crimson line. A flock of substitutes came running out now. The ball was on Harvard's twenty-three yard line, four minutes more to play. The substitutes brought a new, if hopeless touch of spirit to the Harvard eleven. They were ambitious, almost pathetically so in the circumstances, to make a good showing in their fleeting ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... conquest of England. In 1576, on the death of Requesens, the Spanish governor of the Low Countries, a successor was found for him in Don John of Austria, a natural brother of Philip, the victor of Lepanto, and the most famous general of his day. The temper of Don John was daring and ambitious; his aim was a crown; and he sought in the Netherlands the means of winning one. His ambition lent itself easily to the schemes of Mary Stuart and of Rome; and he resolved to bring about by quick concessions a settlement in the Low Countries, to cross with the Spanish forces employed there to England, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... "You are ambitious, woman, and know well how to drive a bargain. Well, if you can ask, I can give, for I have ever loved you, and your mind is great as your body is beautiful. If through your help I should become King of the People of ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... of her equals to that of her superiors, she finds herself a perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate; and this is a sort of dignified desolation which poor Bessy is not at all ambitious of. Vanity gets over all these difficulties; but ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... through the cloud that obscured her intellect, but they carried with them the marks of a mind knit indissolubly to wealth and aggrandizement. The same tenor of thought, and the same broken fragments of ambitious speculation, floated in rapid confusion through the tempests of delirium which swept with ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... trying nearly always to keep for himself what he had taken on another's account. The truth is, that he was constantly occupied with the idea of making for himself an independent dominion, and becoming a great sovereign. "He was," says Duclos, "powerful from his possessions, a great captain, more ambitious than politic, and, from his ingratitude and his perfidies, worthy of his tragic end." His various patrons grew tired at last of being incessantly taken up with and then abandoned, served and then betrayed; and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Armenian-dominated region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the breakup of the centrally directed economic system of the former Soviet Union contributed to a severe economic decline in the early 1990s. By 1994, however, the Armenian Government had launched an ambitious IMF-sponsored economic liberalization program that resulted in positive growth rates in 1995-2006. Armenia joined the WTO in January 2003. Armenia also has managed to slash inflation, stabilize its currency, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... looked so ugly," said she in excuse; and probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor, who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with curious versions of the long words more successfully used ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... encounters, and could scarcely be made even to understand. All those moral qualities which made the old Japanese character admirable are certainly the same which make the modern Japanese student the most indefatigable, the most docile, the most ambitious in the world. But they are also qualities which urge him to efforts in excess of his natural powers, with the frequent result of mental and moral enervation. The nation has entered upon a period of intellectual overstrain. Consciously or unconsciously, in obedience to sudden necessity, Japan has ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... attempts at assassination, Shane-an-Diomais [John the Ambitious] fell a victim to English treachery. Sir William Piers, the Governor of Carrickfergus, invited some Scotch soldiers over to Ireland, and then persuaded them to quarrel with him, and kill him. They accomplished their purpose, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... wished. He believed his cousins would have seventy pounds a-year each, and no more. It was some compensation for the mortifying nature of this announcement, that Mr Hope evidently did not care at all about the matter. He was not an ambitious, nor yet a luxurious man: his practice supplied an income sufficient for the ease of young married people, and it was on ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... through it a strain of idealism which probably constitutes its real force, and also our danger. For strangely emotional and often a creature of his senses, the Bengalee is accessible to spiritual influences with which the worldly-ambitious Brahmanism of the Deccan, for instance, is rarely informed. He is always apt to rush to extremes, and just as amongst the best representatives of the educated classes there was in the last century a revolt against the Hindu social and religious creed of their ancestors ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... therefore see to it that our discourse be serviceable to ourselves, and that it may not appear to others to be vain-glorious or ambitious, and we must show that we are as willing to listen as to teach, and especially must we lay aside all disputatiousness and love of strife in controversy, and cease bandying fierce words with one another as if we were contending with one another at boxing, and leave off rejoicing ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... noisy passage down the beach one comes to the stretch of heavy sand that lies between Pass Christian proper and Henderson's Point. This is a hard pull for the mules, and the more ambitious riders get out and walk. Then, after a final strain through the shifting sands, bravo! the shell road is reached, and one goes cheering through the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... offered to us, we eagerly grasped them. We are too eager, too ambitious, too practical a people to continue to live in dreams of the past and visions of the future, when the present is thrown open to us. We have definitely and forever discarded the concept that we are a peculiar people, the "chosen of the Lord," in so far as that ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... not only played one or two simple instruments in the orchestra of a small, third-class theatre near by, but also copied orchestra parts from original scores, corrected music proofs, and orchestrated many an ambitious attempt at composition sent him by over-enthusiastic students of the Conservatoire. Moreover, towards the end of his first winter, the recluse began to have an occasional caller; and at such times was wont to make disagreeable ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... more modern times she has carried out with complete success. The fertile plains of Northern Italy, the convenient ports on the Adriatic, the rich commerce with the Levant, were tempting baits to what was then the most ambitious power in Europe; and with an undeviating steadiness did she follow up the policy which promised to place such desirable acquisitions within her grasp. Venice, whose power and importance were already on the decline, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... sale, our trio bought half-a-dozen each, and then turned to where the crowd was thickest and the noise greatest. Three or four donkeys loaded with tin-ware were standing near the crowd, when one of them, ambitious of distinction, began clambering over the tops of the others in an insane attempt to get at some greens, temptingly displayed before him. Rattle, bang! right and left went the tins, and in rushed men and women with cudgels; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, it was expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real or visionary, should lightly be rejected. There was much anxiety no doubt in the careless Court still dancing and singing in the midst of calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form an exciting incident at least, if nothing ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... could see far off its snow-white dome, free of clouds, towering into the deep blue sky, many thousand feet above the ocean; while on the other side its brother, Tunguragua, shoots up above the surrounding heights, but, in spite of its ambitious efforts, has failed to reach the same altitude I might speak of Antisana, and many other lofty heights with hard names? but I fancy that a fair idea may be formed of that wonderful region of giant mountains from the description I ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... displayed his munificence, and bestowed innumerable gifts upon his troops and people. "The brain will not be perfumed by a censer of green aloes-wood; place it over the fire that it may diffuse fragrance like ambergris. If ambitious of a great name, make a practice of munificence, for the crop will not shoot till thou shalt sow ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... unhindered a camp sunk in sleep, where we heard no sound but crapulous snorings. Northward, towards the Mulvian Bridge, we sneaked out into the tomb-lined meadows. Through or above the dense fog we could spy the pinnacles of several vast and ambitious mausoleums ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... popularity no man stood higher; but he did not possess the power of restraining his followers or of holding them in hand, and the result was, that instead of being their leader he became their instrument. Fond of applause, ambitious of distinction, timid by nature, destitute of pluck, and of that rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin, to avoid the imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the foreground, but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the plot in which ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... must say I get discouraged when I read of one man being worth a thousand million dollars. It makes me feel mighty poor. I don't see any use in being ambitious and taking any stock at all in anything so far as I am concerned, but I do hate to see the government come to harm. I get to thinking that if the Declaration of Independence isn't going to hold out that I'll change my politics ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... Wuertembergers, not even Saxons or Bavarians, but all are Germans, and for one photograph of the Grand Duke of Hesse and his Duchess you will see here one hundred of "Unser Kaiser" and "Unsere Kaiserin." They have become Imperialists, and the ambitious spirit which animates them is shown by the act of a soldier at Liege who chalked up on a wall: "Kaiser Wilhelm ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... the Philistines; Our David has made them admirers and patrons; He has numbered the people Night after night in his theatres. Will he ever, I wonder, send forth for the Shunammite? Many there be who would answer his calling, For he has shown ambitious fair women To acting's high places. As Rodin in marble saw wondrous creations To be freed by the chisel, So Belasco in immature genius and beauty Sees the resplendent star to be kindled At his own steady beacon. Too varied a mind for our comprehension, Too big and too broad ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... Seeker, "you see before you the wreck of an ambitious man—ruined by the pursuit of place and power. This morning when I set out from the ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... about those Indians, that they were wild warriors from the west, that none of his good, pious Indians of Canada could possibly have been among them. And the Intendant, Francois Bigot, the most corrupt and ambitious man in North America, will say that they obtained no rifles, no muskets, no powder, no lead from him or his agents. Oh, no, these fine French gentlemen will disown the attack upon us, as they would have disavowed it, just ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... gave way in the courageous developments of the man. He soon evinced the sagacity, cunning, perseverance, and heroic courage which constitute the admiration of the Indians. And he relied largely upon these in the gratification of an ambitious, vainglorious, and mischief-loving disposition. In wisdom and energy he was superior to any one who had ever lived before. Yet he was simple when circumstances required it, and was ever the object of tricks and ridicule in others. He could transform himself into any ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... them. Having dined with Betty as recently as the day before, he contented himself with a nod in her direction. His greeting to Norton was a more ambitious undertaking; he said he was pleased to see him; but in so far as facial expression might have indorsed the statement this pleasure was well disguised, it did not get into his features. Pausing on the terrace beside them, he indulged ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... who owned it persuade me that he was in earnest if he said he loved me? How could I persuade him that I was worth caring for and not a mere ambitious fool? There would be too much ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... excitement. The occupation, and the indispensable solace of the last ten sad years, had been his poems. He would not write more verse, when the oestrus was not on him, but he must write. He took up all the dropped threads of past years, ambitious plans formed in the fulness of vigour, and laid aside, but not abandoned. He was the very opposite of Shelley, who could never look at a piece of his own composition a second time, but when he had thrown it off at a heat, rushed into ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Puiset and William Longchamp to work in the same yoke. In spirit and birth Hugh was an aristocrat of the highest type. Of not remote royal descent, a relative of the kings both of England and France, he was a proud, worldly-minded, intensely ambitious prelate of the feudal sort and of great power, almost a reigning prince in the north. Longchamp was of the class of men who rise in the service of kings. Not of peasant birth, though but little above it, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... sensibly, and I smiled at the poor devil's ambitious dream of wearing a soldier's greasy red jacket; for I supposed that that was what his words meant. Still, his "shortest way" to Montevideo continued to puzzle me considerably. For two or three hours we had been riding nearly parallel to ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... in a cataract of spray, with his kayak doubled up but himself uninjured, while the Eskimos greeted the event with a shout of alarm. This changed into laughter when it was found that the ambitious man was none the worse for his toss; and the women in one of the oomiak; paddling quickly up, hauled the drenched and crestfallen man out of the sea. They also picked up his spear with the sealskin buoy attached. Giving him the place of honour in the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... the church, were assigned to Michelangelo. The ground plan of the monumental chapel corresponds to Brunelleschi's sacristy, and is generally known as the Sagrestia Nuova. Internally Buonarroti altered its decorative panellings, and elevated the vaulting of the roof into a more ambitious cupola. This portion of the edifice was executed in the rough during his residence at Florence. The facade was never begun in earnest, and remains unfinished. The library was constructed according to his designs, and may be taken, on the whole, as a genuine specimen of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... course of events dissatisfaction spreads among the stockholders with the Smith management, partly shared by ambitious Smith men who thought themselves entitled to reward in the shape of places and salaries, but were "left out in the cold." Now the time for a new stockholders' meeting arrives. After a hot fight the Jones party carries the day. Its ticket of directors being ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... world, from having visited her married sisters in Milltown and Portland; but on the other hand there was a certain sharpness and lack of sympathy in Huldah which repelled rather than attracted. With Dick Carter she could at least talk intelligently about lessons. He was a very ambitious boy, full of plans for his future, which he discussed quite freely with Rebecca, but when she broached the subject of her future his interest sensibly lessened. Into the world of the ideal Emma Jane, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... strange that they should have left their own beautiful country to come to Britain, with its cold climate and savage inhabitants, but they were a very ambitious people, who would not be content until they had subdued every other nation ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... we arrived off the head of the Gaboon estuary in this calm, for had we had wind to deal with we should have come to an end. There were one or two wandering puffs, about the first one of which sickened our counterpane of its ambitious career as a marine sail, so it came away from its gaff and spread itself over the crew, as much as to say, "Here, I've had enough of this sailing. I'll be a counterpane again." We did a great deal of fine varied, spirited navigation, details ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Or seek auxiliar force; at length decreed To call some hero to partake the deed, Forthwith AEneas rises to his thought: For him in Troy's remotest lines he sought, Where he, incensed at partial Priam, stands, And sees superior posts in meaner hands. To him, ambitious of so great an aid, The bold Deiphobus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... he was engaged. Wukadinovic defines quite correctly the connection of the drama with its autobiographical meaning: "As the poet sees the ideal of love arising next to that of poetic fame, so he grants to the ambitious prince, who exhibits so many of his own traits, a loving woman standing at his side, who rewards him at ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... he grouped his children in their proper order, and made the picture to hang on a certain spot on the walls of his village church. No payment was expected nor fee demanded—it was a love-offering. It was not until ecclesiastics grew ambitious and asked for more pictures that bargains were struck. Did ever a painter of that far-off day marry a maid, and in time were they blessed with a babe, then straightway the painter worked his joy up into ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... had, I believe, the ambitious design which its title suggests. What was done of it was destroyed, with other things, when he joined the Jesuits. My copy is a contemporary autograph of 16 lines, written when he was still an undergraduate; I ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... time to time been made in the way of building boats and ships with double hulls, the object being to obtain increased stability, and thus reduce to a minimum the rolling and pitching of ordinary vessels. The steamship Castalia was an ambitious attempt in this direction. She was built for the passenger service between England and France. But she did not realise the expectations ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... a prize at Rome and several other artists had had a room set aside for them to work in. Some were making post-cards, some more ambitious drawings, and in the sculptor's studio was the head of the young doctor we had just seen and an unfinished plaster group for a camp monument. On the wall was a sign in Latin and French—"Unhappy the spirit which worries about the future," a facetious ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... administration. It would have been quite as easy to have overthrown Pichereau a day after her soiree as a few days before. Was Granet then, in a great hurry to be made minister? Oh! her opinion of him had always been a correct one! An ambitious schemer. He had triumphed, or at least he had expected to triumph. And the consequence was that Sabine found herself without a Minister to introduce to her guests. It was as if Granet ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... were to do and ask no questions. Whether it was right or wrong mattered not to them, they were responsible only to their leaders, amenable only to God. I was one among them, into the secret of all they did; and they looked for me to speak a good word for them with Brigham, as they were ambitious to please him and obtain his blessing. The captain of the Danites never asked me to do anything he knew I was averse to doing. Under ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... treasure?" I asked with apprehension. For ever since I once made a tale (of friction) out of one of Bunt's stories of real life, he has been ambitious for me to write another, and is forever suggesting motifs which invariably—I say invariably—imply the discovery of great treasures. With him, fictitious literature must always turn upon the discovery of ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... talk to me in this way, urge me to be ambitious, and yet confess that you could give yourself to one of those drones of whom you speak ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... process of philosophy were capable so to sear and indurate our feelings, that nothing should agitate them but what arose instantly and immediately out of our own selfish interests! I would as soon wish my hand to be as callous as horn, that it might escape an occasional cut or scratch, as I would be ambitious of the stoicism which should render my heart like a ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... essentially peaceful, essentially friendly, all the world over; who in the intervals of slaughter offer cigarettes to their foes, and tenderly dress their enemies' wounds; whose worst and age-long sin it is that they allow themselves so easily to be dominated and led by, ambitious and greedy schemers—surely it is time that they should wake up and throw off these sham governments—these governments that are three-quarters class-scheming and fraud and only one-quarter genuine expressions ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet. As a scholar he was ambitious to excel. He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness. He had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend. His nature was entirely free ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... from a well-known family of Lexington, Kentucky; her father, Robert S. Todd, being one of the leading citizens of his State. She had come to Springfield in 1839 to live with her sister, Mrs. Edwards. She was a brilliant, witty, highly-educated girl, ambitious and spirited, with a touch of audacity which only made her more attractive, and she at once took a leading position in Springfield society. There were many young unmarried men in the town, drawn there by ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... at length chucked the book he had run through to Leonard, and taking out a pocket-book and pencil, amused himself with calculations on some detail of his business, after which he fell into an absorbed train of thought, part pecuniary, part ambitious. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visiting list, and, perhaps, the dresses and partners of every couple at a crowded ball; she finds all these particulars a useful supply for daily conversation, she therefore remembers them with care. An amateur, who is ambitious to shine in the society of literary men, collects literary anecdotes, and retails them whenever occasion permits. Men of sense, who cultivate their memories for useful purposes, are not obliged to treasure up heterogeneous facts: by reducing ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... different countenances are spoken of. "He came unto his own [possessions], and his own [men] received him not."—John, i, 11. The Rev. J. G. Cooper, has it: "He came unto his own (creatures,) and his own (creatures) received him not."—Pl. and Pract. Gram., p. 44. This ambitious editor of Virgil, abridger of Murray, expounder of the Bible, and author of several "new and improved" grammars, (of different languages,) should have understood this text, notwithstanding the obscurity of our version. "[Greek: Eis ta idia aelthe. kai ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... described her, a girl companion told me her name. I remembered her then, one of the girls who had grown up quickly, the daughter of a skilled mechanic who made good wages and owned a comfortable home. She was an only child and her mother was socially ambitious for her. The mother had done nothing to interest her daughter in the church, only now and then did she attend Sunday-school; friends were entertained Sunday evening, so she had no connection with the young peoples' societies of the church. She is a type of ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... winters in hot pursuit of another place, but his claims failing to be recognized, he relapsed into the natural belief that his party was in league to proscribe him. After making a large number of political ventures of a more ambitious order, and with the same mortifying results, he abandoned that field and took to speculation in patent rights. He vended a wonderful churn-dash, circulated a marvellous flatiron, and expatiated through the country on the latest improvement in the line of a washing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... She thought of Annie's cosy home which three Visions now made radiant, of John Coulson's love and devotion, and her heart answered the accusation and declared it false. She wondered if other girls were as silently ambitious as she, and why this best of all ambitions must be always locked away in secret, while lesser ones might be proudly ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the French and the Belgian, is a peaceable man. He is military but not militant. He is sentimental rather than impassioned. He loves Christmas and other feast days. He is not ambitious. He fights bravely, but he would rather sing or make ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is so only in this qualified sense: that it presents but an imperfect image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified by the habits of the different nations among whom they were introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... original seeker after honesty do we take him to be,) that "the great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another. It is he who, while he demonstrates the iniquity of the laws and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It is he who looks on the ambitious both as weak and fraudulent. It is he who hath no disposition or occasion for any kind of conceit, no reason for being or for appearing different from what he is. It is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... children impaired rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in gaining the great object of his life, the title of King. In the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against the Plantagenets. The envy of the class ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... good "wind" for his own acts, but, as he was naturally ambitious, he started in on systematic breathing exercises. These would do him much general good even if he should never enter ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... a stall, and to be preceded by men with silver rods, is the bait which the ambitious squire is perpetually holding out to his second son.... If such sort of preferments are extinguished, a very serious evil (as I have often said before) is done to the Church—the service becomes unpopular, further spoliation is dreaded, the whole system ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... of lawless treachery, Of usurpation and ambitious pride; And they that for their private amours dare Turmoil our land, and set their broils abroach, Let them be warned by these premises. And as a woman was the only cause That civil discord was then stirred up, So let us ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... brought on the war. Southern capitalists gloried in their power, and, accustomed to absolute domination over their slaves, assumed the same attitude of superiority over their fellow-citizens of the North. They ruled in Congress, dominated over the press and the pulpit, and, ambitious to extend their dominion, demanded larger territory for the extension of the slave system. When this was refused, they set up an independent standard and brought on the war. The end was disastrous to the South. The capitalists were well-nigh ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 48, No. 10, October, 1894 • Various
... the ball, less resolutely ambitious than Angelique, found by degrees, in the devotion of other cavaliers, ample compensation for only so much of the Intendant's favor as he liberally bestowed on all the sex; but that did not content Angelique: she looked with sharpest eyes of inquisition ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... trivial rationalism of the end of the eighteenth century. The reason having been long repressed revenges itself, usurping everything. The explanation of the rise of positive religion and of the claim of revelation is sought in the hypothesis of deceit, of ambitious priestcraft and incurable credulity. The religion of those who thus argue, in so far as they claim any religion, is merely the current morality. Their explanation of the religion of others is that it is merely the current ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... for work, and sends this message to all ambitious students: "To become a singer requires work, work, and again work! It need not be in any special corner of the earth; there is no one spot that will do more for you than other places. It doesn't matter so much where you are, if you have intelligence and a good ear. Listen to yourself; ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... passes, endeavoring to lure and woo him from his idle ease. It is the form of a beautiful woman, who seeks by love to awaken in him noble purposes, worthy of his powers, and to inspire him for ambitious efforts. One by one these opportunities have passed, with their calls and invitations, only to be unheeded. At last he is arousing to seize them, but it is too late; they are vanishing from sight and ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... essay in which this passage stands had no less ambitious an aim than the remodelling of the classification of the Mammalia, its author might be supposed to have written under a sense of peculiar responsibility, and to have tested, with especial care, the statements he ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... scandal that an imperial edict had to be issued, forbidding the practice in future. Another time, he came out with an unparalleled twist to his tail, the construction of which had occupied his mind for some days, and which occasioned the death by suicide of three over-ambitious youths who found themselves unable to survive the mortification of an unsuccessful attempt to imitate it. Again, to the infinite horror of the Mandarins, he paraded himself one afternoon with decacuminated finger-nails, and came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... countries. This union was made under the authority of an arbitrary grant of Pope Adrian, in order that the Church of Ireland should be reduced to the same servitude with those that were nearer to his see. It is not very wonderful that an ambitious monarch should make use of any pretence in his way to so considerable an object. What is extraordinary is, that for a very long time, even quite down to the Reformation, and in their most solemn acts, the kings of England founded their title wholly on this grant: they called for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... dramatic writers. His "Memoirs" against M. Goesman had amused Paris by the ridicule they threw upon a Parliament which was disliked; and his admission to an intimacy with M. de Maurepas procured him a degree of influence over important affairs. He then became ambitious of influencing public opinion by a kind of drama, in which established manners and customs should be held up to popular derision and the ridicule of the new philosophers. After several years of prosperity the minds of the French had become more generally ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... to him. He seems to have flattered each in turn. He upheld Bononcini in the great madrigal controversy, and appears to have wearied Handel by his repeated visits. The great Saxon easily saw through the flatteries of a man who was in reality an ambitious rival, and joked about him, not always in the best taste. When he was told that Greene was giving concerts at the "Devil Tavern," near Temple Bar, "Ah!" he exclaimed, "mein poor friend Toctor Greene—so he is gone to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... them who had turned revolutionists because they honestly considered it their duty to fight the existing evils, but there were also those who chose this work for selfish, ambitious motives; the majority, however, was attracted to the revolutionary idea by the desire for danger, for risks, the enjoyment of playing with one's life, which, as Nekhludoff knew from his military experiences, is ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... brother had earned his first money by rowing a stranger over the river, he came and gave it to his mother without reserving a penny! Then his mother looked so happy that he swelled with pride, and could not help betraying how ambitious beyond measure ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... mankind. The States already boast of thirty millions of inhabitants—not of unnoticed and unnoticeable beings requiring little, knowing little, and doing little, such as are the Eastern hordes, which may be counted by tens of millions, but of men and women who talk loudly and are ambitious, who eat beef, who read and write, and understand the dignity of manhood. But these thirty millions are as nothing to the crowds which will grow sleek, and talk loudly, and become aggressive on these ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... CLOVIS.—When Clovis (481-511), a warlike and ambitious chief of the Merovingian family of princes, became king of the Franks, they numbered but a few thousand warriors. The remnant of the Roman dominion on the Seine and the Loire he annexed, after having put to death ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... de Chargeboeuf, about 1803, one of the most beautiful young girls of Troyes, poor but noble and ambitious. Her relative, Vinet the attorney, had made "a little Catherine de Medicis" of her, and married her to Denis Rogron. Some years after this marriage she desired to become a widow as soon as possible, so that she might marry General Marquis de Montriveau, a peer of France, who was very attentive ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... grasp the iron crown of Charlemagne, which had reposed in the treasury of Monza for a thousand years, and for which he had so ardently longed. Even at that moment, when he placed it on his own head, were the aspirings of the ambitious spirit satisfied?—or were not his thoughts taking a wider range of conquest than he had yet achieved? And for her, who knelt at his feet, about to receive the highest honor that mortal hands can confer—did the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... out, we must go back to Cambridge. I can't bear to think I have stopped that. I am not going to hoard you, and cling round you. You have got things to do for other people, young men in particular, which no one else can do just like you. I am not a bit ambitious. I don't want you to be M.P., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., &c., &c., but I do want you to do things, and to help you to do things. I don't want to be a sort of tea-table Egeria to the young men—I don't mean that—and I don't wish to be ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tyranny, seldom giving me a civil word; nor could the utmost condescension on my side, though attended with continual presents and rewards, and raising his wages, content or please him. In a word, he was as absolutely my master as was ever an ambitious, industrious prime minister over an indolent and voluptuous king. All my other journeymen paid more respect to him than to me; for they considered my favor as a necessary consequence of ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably considered him as a hostage sufficient to ensure the good faith of his father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even the most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their children than for themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired was such as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,—with what object ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... members (among them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the parliamentary career of so many ambitious statesmen depends. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a career of usefulness for the ambitious teacher of a rural school. There is a large field for the discipline of the directive power open even for the humblest of teachers in ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... incredulity of so monstrous a crime. "What dreadful charge is this you bring?" asks the King, in natural doubt; "How were guilt so prodigious possible?" Telramund offers as explanation a further accusation, and in doing it gives a hint, not of his motive in accusing Elsa, for the violent ambitious personage is honest in thinking her guilty, but of the disposition of mind toward her which had made him over-ready to believe evil of her: "This vain and dreamy girl, who haughtily repelled my hand, of a secret amour I accuse her. She thought that once ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall |
