"Aspiring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its domains, its untaxed lords, their retainers, its exemptions and privileges, made war upon the aspiring spirit of humanity, and fell with all its grandeurs. Its spirit walks the earth and haunts the institutions of to-day, in the great corporations, with the control of the National highways, their occupation of great domains, their power to tax, their cynical contempt for the law, their sorcery ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... education, such as this, would be but an indifferent preparative for a man to become a polite author, but such is the irresistable force of genius, that neither this, nor his poverty, which was very deplorable, could suppress his ambition: aspiring to reputation, and distinction, rather than to fortune and power. His writings soon made him known to the court and town, yet it was neither to the savour of the court, nor to that of the earl of Rochester, that he was indebted to the nomination the king made of him, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... rather than be plagued with servants who had so much liberty. All the novels, poetry, and light literature of the world, which form the general staple of female reading, are based upon aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristocratic ideas; and women among us are constantly aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life rather than to those of native republican simplicity. How many women are there, think you, that would not go in for aristocracy and aristocratic prerogatives, if they were only sure that they themselves should be ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange tree in it. Jo's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments. This year it was to be a plantation of sun flowers, the seeds of which cheerful land aspiring plant were to feed Aunt Cockle-top and her family of chicks. Beth had old-fashioned fragrant flowers in her garden, sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the birds and catnip for the pussies. Amy had a bower in hers, rather ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Springfield, were to become cities, and certain others, like New Salem, were to disappear. Railroads were not yet, though many were planning, and manufactures were chiefly of the domestic sort. But in the matter of the opportunities it presented to aspiring youth the country was already Western, and no longer wild Western. Hunting shirts and moccasins were disappearing. Knives in one's belt had gone out of fashion. The merely adventurous were passing beyond the Mississippi, and the field was open ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that, though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring future. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... faith, ye mystery-solving lynxes! Robe us once more in heaven-aspiring creeds Happier was dreaming Egypt with her sphinxes, The stony convent with its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Pizarro. On the breaking out of the disturbances between the factions of Pizarro and Almagro, he was so much disgusted that he returned into Spain, without having acquired the riches that his services and good qualities deserved, considering the immense wealth which was found in Peru. Aspiring to undertake some brilliant enterprise suited to his lofty genius, he petitioned the king to be allowed to undertake the conquest of Florida, which was readily granted to him, as he was a person of experience, of a fine presence and graceful carriage, and well ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... conceive, even were it as you say, why my mother should be so displeased about it. She surely cannot suppose me so silly as to be elated by the unmeaning admiration of anyone, or so meanly aspiring as to marry a man I could not love, merely because he is a Duke. She was incapable of such a thing herself, she cannot ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... character and had a language of their own more eloquent than the poetry to which they were what the fragrance is to the flower. Wiser critics than Rose felt and admired this; less partial ones could not deny their praise to a first effort, which seemed as spontaneous and aspiring as a lark's song; and, when one or two of these Jupiters had given a nod of approval, Mac found himself, not exactly famous, but much talked about. One set abused, the other set praised, and the little book was sadly mauled among them, for it was too original to be ignored, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... cast upon them more than their strength seemed framed to bear—the weak, the aspiring, the adventurous and self-sacrificing in will, and the faltering in nerve—will understand the kind of agony which ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... in while waiting for something better, or till the corn is grown. Coming man, benefactor of our race, you who shall show us how to be contented without being sluggish,—how to be restful, and yet aspiring,—how to take the goods the gods provide us, without losing out of manly hearts the sweet sense of providing,—how to plant happy feet firmly on the present, and not miss from eager eyes the inspiriting outlook ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... became a saleable charge. The remnant of the original clerks constituted the new Basoche, which thenceforward consisted only of those who worked as clerks for the procureurs, the richer ones among them aspiring themselves to attain the position of procureur. They all, however, retained some traces of their original conditions. "They are admitted," writes an 18th-century author, "to plead before M. le lieutenant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... out of his comfortable present only to look into his comfortable past. Yet let this estate be temporary; for it is well to return to our thin diet, and, instead of jolly after-dinner talk, repeat the high and aspiring phrases of certain New-Englanders who lead the generous thought and life of a continent. Phrases! Yes, but how many nebulous ideas, think you, would it take to stuff out their hollowness? Nay, my objecting friend, if the ideas are not wholly clear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... to marry, and to marry any lady in the county, I think you need not be surprised at my now aspiring to the hand of your daughter, to whom I have been many years attached. I beg, therefore, to say that my object in writing to you is, to ask your permission to pay my addresses to her, and to make her my wife. My attorney will see to any arrangements you may require ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... otherwise unattainable bit of jewelry. The work is done secretly, since they have not the simplicity either of the real ouvriere or of the grande dame, both of whom sew openly, the one for charity, the other for a living. But this middle class, despising the worker and aspiring always toward the luxurious side of life, feels that embroidery or tapestry of some description is the only suitable thing for their fingers, and busy on this, preserve the appearance of the dignity they covet. Often their yearly gains are ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... delightful faces, which the flowery pencil of Greuze could alone have painted in all their velvet freshness, were now worthy of inspiring the melancholy ideal of the immortal Ary Scheffer, who gave us Mignon aspiring to Paradise, and Margaret dreaming of Faust. Rose, leaning back on the couch, held her head somewhat bowed upon her bosom, over which was crossed a handkerchief of black crape. The light streaming from a window opposite, shone softly on her pure, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Strasbourg, intending to fix his residence in that town. He was received with great cordiality, as a man persecuted for his religious opinions, and withal a great alchymist. He found that sphere too narrow for his aspiring genius, and retired in the same year to the more wealthy city of Amsterdam. He there hired a magnificent house, established an equipage which eclipsed in brilliancy those of the richest merchants, and assumed the title of Excellency. Where he got the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... like this... is worth a dozen of the aspiring, idealistic sort, since it has a deal of rough laughter and a dash of real tears ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the beginning of the period under consideration. Through his efforts and reputation as a writer the claims of the University and the College of Arts and Sciences were brought to the attention of aspiring youth throughout the country.[527] Upon the resignation of Dr. Thirkield to become Bishop of the Methodist Church in 1912, the Reverend Doctor Stephen M. Newman was chosen as the head of the university. He has served in that ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... Byron surprises us at times by the fine quality of his good nature. His letters are often petulant,—especially when Murray has sent him tragedies instead of tooth-powder; but he is perhaps the only man on record who received with perfect equanimity the verses of an aspiring young poet, wrote him the cheerfullest of letters, and actually invited him to breakfast. The letter is still extant; but the verses were so little the precursor of fame that the youth's subsequent history is to this day unknown. It was with truth that Byron said of himself: "I ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... been repaid before Mr. Bonteen took his journey to Prague. Mr. Bonteen was, however, unable to deny that the cost of that journey was defrayed by Lady Eustace, and it was thought mean in a man aspiring to be Chancellor of the Exchequer to have his travelling expenses paid for him by a lady. Many, however, were of opinion that Mr. Bonteen had been almost romantic in his friendship, and that the bright eyes of Lady Eustace had produced upon this dragon of business the wonderful effect ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... soliloquy, "they are gone, never more to return, the careless happy days of childhood, the sunny period of youth, and the aspiring dreams of mature manhood. I once indulged in many ambitious dreams of fame, and those dreams have never been realized. Many with whom I set out on equal ground have outstripped me in the race of life, and here am I alone. Many who were once my inferiors have nearly overtaken me, and doubtless ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... more or less every educated Athenian. Other Greeks, Lacedaemonians or Arcadians, could act, with bravery and in concert; but the Athenian Xenophon was among the few who could think, speak, and act, with equal efficiency. It was this threefold accomplishment which an aspiring youth was compelled to set before himself as an aim, in the democracy of Athens; and which the Sophists[50] as well as the democratical institutions—both of them so hardly depreciated by most critics—helped and encouraged him to acquire. It was this threefold accomplishment, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... equipment. He had slipped into office, not because the people yearned for him, but because there had happened to be a battle on between two factions of his natural political opponents in the fortunate hour he had selected for aspiring to office. Like most other American officeholders he spent his days and nights scheming out ways to continue living at the public's expense. He perused Mary Randall's screed as he sat over his ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... its Strength and Character. Now all Remembrance of its many disheartening Miscarriages was soon lost in the Glory of his Conquests. The chief Motive of this War, was to lessen the vast Acquisitions of the Emperor of the Maregins. His Daughter the Queen of Ghinoer, who was an aspiring, lofty, and resolute Princess, in contempt of the many Treaties made to prevent it, insisted that her Sex did not exclude her from inheriting all her Father's Dominions. Besides, an Army of tried ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... selection. What is chiefly wanting is initiative on the part of the men who are charged with the government of their fellows. They are so deeply absorbed in economic interests and rival influences, that all desire of aspiring to a higher social ideal is paralyzed and etiolated in them. We require a powerful social shaking if we are to ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... a sedative. The mother was a washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful attractions, essentially of the nervous type. She was not without pride in her Cavalier stock and the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, she was reserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thoroughly self-sufficient. She finished well up in her class in a small, woman's so-called "college" and lived with such prudence and exercised such foresight that, in spite of her Methodist rearing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopal ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the familiar (and therefore frequently undignified) exterior of present and passing events. But the theme is justice: and my voice is raised for mankind; for us who are alive, and for all posterity:—justice and passion; clear-sighted aspiring justice, and passion sacred as vehement. These, like twin-born Deities delighting in each other's presence, have wrought marvels in the inward mind through the whole region of the Pyrenean Peninsula. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the grandmother of Jane, a woman of dignity and cultivated mind, took her to the house of Madame De Boismorel, a lady of noble rank, whose children she had partly educated. It was a great event, and Jane was dressed with the utmost care to visit the aristocratic mansion. The aspiring girl, with no disposition to come down to the level of those beneath her, and with still less willingness to do homage to those above her, was entirely unconscious of the mortifying condescension with which she was to be received. The porter at the door saluted ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... than ever. All about towered the crystal mountains, their bases leaden-hued and formless in the ghostly gloom, while their middle parts showed deep gleams of ultramarine, brightening to purple higher up, and a few aspiring peaks behind us sparkled brilliantly where the sunlight touched them. It was such a spectacle as the imagination could not have conceived, and I have often tried in vain to reproduce it satisfactorily in ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the best advantage, and with cheerful countenances and occasional jokes, accompanied with peals of merry laughter, seemed happier than millionaires or kings! Their dialect was a strange jumble of Dutch, English, and African. All were fond of talking, and, like aspiring politicians in happy New England, neglected no chance to display their extraordinary power of language. And such a jabbering, such a confusion of tongues, as I listened to that Sunday morning in the market-place of Demarara, overwhelmed me with ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... universities were, however, subject to two limitations, which prevented them from providing a higher education for all aspiring students. The expense of living at Oxford and Cambridge, and the close connexion of both universities with the Church of England, rendered them difficult of access to many. These limitations were emphasised by the fact that Scotland possessed five universities which were ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... "La, no, ma'am! Mr. Rand." The tone conveyed, pleasantly enough, both the grotesque impossibility of Mr. Tom Mocket aspiring to such a post, and the eminent suitability of its lying in the fortunes of Lewis Rand. Vinie, shy and pink and faintly pretty in her shell calico, leaned against the wooden railing beneath the grapevine, and appealed ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul." To make one's self so much more interesting would help to make life interesting, and life was probably, to many of this aspiring congregation, a dream of freedom and fortitude. There were faulty parts in the Emersonian philosophy; but the general tone was magnificent; and I can easily believe that, coming when it did and where it did, it should have been drunk in by a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without a lesson to me. Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet! —that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... me, perhaps, my dearest friend, of consulting my own feelings too much; but I am tempted to believe that this trampled people have so much human left in them, as to be capable of aspiring to the rights of men by noble exertions, if some friend to mankind would point the road, and give them a prospect of success. If I am mistaken in this, I would avail myself, even of their weakness, and, conquering one fear by another, produce equal good to the public. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... transition, the future life is a sweet reliance, a terrible certainty, or a pathetic perhaps. But living in the present in the humble and loving discharge of its duties, our souls harmonized with its conditions though aspiring beyond them, why should we ever despair or be troubled overmuch? Have we not eternity in our thought, infinitude in our view, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... as much pleased at this distinguished recognition of his genius as any other aspiring young journalist might ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... no longer stand, either by their own or by foreign resources, yet did they not desist from the prosecution of hostilities. So far were they from being weary of defending liberty, even though unsuccessfully: and they preferred being defeated to not aspiring after victory. Who does not find his patience tired, either in writing, or reading, of wars of such continuance; and which yet exhausted not the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... fair or uncouth creatures feel, through the dim waves, the blessed longing of spring; and yet not one of them dreams that within that murky mass there lies a treasure too white and beautiful to be yet intrusted to the waves, and that for many a day that bud must yearn toward the surface, before, aspiring above it, as mortals to heaven, it meets the sunshine with the answering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... knees, his soul aspiring and his hands clasped, spoke aloud and slowly, rehearsing the responses of the Psalm with such deep attention and respect, that the meaning of this noble liturgy, which has ceased to amaze us, because ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... those worlds we cannot know unless you humans show us. I have hoped so much, but I suppose it's wrong—for you—you are so very human, and I—well, I'm not!" The last three words held all the sadness and the longing of mankind aspiring to be God. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... characteristics of boy life, years ago, on the Ohio, characteristics, however, that were not peculiar to that section only. The story presents a vivid and interesting picture of the difficulties which in those days beset the path of the youth aspiring for an education. These obstacles, which the hero of the story succeeds by his genuine manliness and force of character in surmounting, are just such as a majority of the most distinguished Americans, in all walks of life, including Lincoln and Garfield, have had to ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... Freethought brands persecution as the worst crime against humanity. It stifles the spirit of progress and strangles its pioneers. It eliminates the brave, the adventurous and the aspiring, and leaves only the timid, the sluggish and the grovelling. It removes the lofty and spares the low. It levels all the hills of thought and makes an intellectual flatness. It drenches all the paths of freedom with blood and tears, and makes earth ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... degrading when perverted, as it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,—all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... which profess to be descended from the mythical rishi or inspired saint whose name the gotra bears". There is thus nothing to bar the conjecture that the exogamous gotras of the whole Brahmans were once a form of totem-kindred, which (like aspiring non-Aryan stocks at the present day) dropped the totem-name and renamed the septs from some eponymous ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Well may all aspiring young Americans take example from the author of Little Women, and when longing to set the world on fire in the expression of their genius, learn not to despise or to turn away from the simple, commonplace ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... church, let them remember that they are not exempted from a civil subserviency. They are by no means elevated above their natural situation as servants, because they become Christians; but all the peculiar claims of domestic duty remain. An aspiring, or a haughty spirit, is unbecoming their newly acquired character, and shows that they have very imperfectly learned of him who was "meek and lowly of heart." Every person is respectable in his station, exactly in proportion as it is properly occupied; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... unleavened by faith, the mere base maximum of cleverness. Poor little Singleton, on the other side, with his hands behind him, his head thrown back, and his eyes following devoutly the course of Roderick's elucidation, might pass for an embodiment of aspiring candor, with feeble wings to rise on. In all this, Roderick's was certainly ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... as amanuensis offered in an advertisement, and comforts himself on failing with the reflection that the advertiser was probably a sharper. He writes piteous letters to publishers, and gets, of course, the stereotyped reply with which the most amiable of publishers must damp the ardour of aspiring genius. The disappointment is not much softened by the publisher's statement that 'he does not mean by this to insinuate any want of merit in the poem, but rather a want of attention in the public.' Bit by bit his surgical instruments go to the pawnbroker. When ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Rolls her rich treasures on her parent flood; Amid a thousand sails young Boston laves, High looms majestic Newport o'er the waves, Patapsco's bay contracts his yielding side, As spreading Baltimore invades his tide; Aspiring Richmond tops the bank of James, And Charleston sways ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... examinations in their respective offices, showing that—These examinations and the excellent qualifications of those admitted to the service through them have had a marked incidental effect upon the persons previously in the service, and particularly upon those aspiring to promotion. There has been on the part of these latter an increased interest in the work and a desire to extend acquaintance with it beyond the particular desk occupied, and thus the morale of the entire force has been raised. The examinations have been attended by many citizens, who have ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that is the story. My mother's father was a tanner down there somewhere. He was fairly well-to-do for his position, and father was considered most audacious for aspiring to her hand!" ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... sauntering between flowerless beds with his companion, stood stock still. The Chief Whip of a political party is a devil of a fellow. To the aspiring young politician he is much more a devil of a fellow than the Prime Minister or any Secretary of State. If a Chief Whip breathes the suggestion that a man might possibly stand for election as a Member ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... same, yet a different person from what he had appeared in his early years. The fiery freedom of the aspiring youth had given place to the steady and stern composure of the approved soldier and skilful politician. There were deep traces of care on those noble features, over which each emotion used formerly to pass, like light clouds across a summer sky. That sky was now, not perhaps clouded, but still ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... of the far-away was different. In him was no longing for vanished ages, no aspiring toward worlds lost in the night of time. His strong and solid temperament, dazzled with the luxuriance of life, its sanguine forces and moral health, diverted him from the artificial graces and painted chloroses ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... score of little things were repaired. Account books of a crude type were established, and soon a big leak in the treasury was discovered and stopped; and many little leaks and unpaid bills were unearthed. An aspiring barkeeper of puzzling methods was, much to his indignation, hedged about by daily accountings and, last of all, a thick and double door of demarcation was made between the bar-room and the house. One was to be a ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... mankind with theoretical speciousness, few have served any other purpose than to show the ingenuity of their contrivers. A voyage to the moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century, who began to dote upon their glossy plumes, and fluttered with impatience for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... articled to a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a reporter, and then a successful author; and how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, who dies; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effecting the general ruin, and aspiring to the hand of Agnes, till his villanies are detected and his machinations defeated by Micawber—how all this comes about, would be a long story to tell. But, as is usual with Dickens, there are subsidiary rills of story running into the main stream, and by one ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Convent, worshipped as the idol of the gay gallants of the city, and the despair and envy of her own sex. She was a born sovereign of men, and she felt it. It was her divine right to be preferred. She trod the earth with dainty feet, and a step aspiring as that of the fair Louise de La Valliere when she danced in the royal ballet in the forest of Fontainebleau and stole a king's heart by the flashes of her pretty feet. Angelique had been indulged by her father in every ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... is just a touch of pathos in the thought of many aspiring Englishmen of the Georgian era passing away on the eve of momentous changes, privileged only to see indications of the coming times and not to enter into possession. But there is one element which qualifies this ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... strengthen the Plebeians, by lifting them out of the degradation consequent on poverty, and so render them more dangerous antagonists in political warfare; and it would render the Patricians less able to contend with aspiring foes, by taking from them one of the sources of their wealth. Cassius failed, and was executed, having been tried and condemned by the Patricians, who then ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... dumplings, sops in the pan, and delicious toast-and-water, in incredible quantities. Beef, mutton, lamb, pork, and veal are ours; and, if you were not the most restless and dissatisfied of human beings, you would never think of aspiring to enjoy them." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the Souper de Beaucaire, the Memoire sur la Culture du Murier, &c. Some of the manuscripts of these writings must be still extant; and a comparison of the spelling of his unpretending youth, with that of his aspiring {204} manhood, would show at once whether the "orthographe extraordinairement estropiee" of his later productions was the result ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind;" to illustrate "the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind;" and to celebrate Love "as the sole law which should govern the moral world." The wild romantic treatment of this didactic motive makes the poem highly characteristic ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... all the old arguments over again, and wound up by saying that even if I were to become possessor of the whole of his business to-morrow, I would sell it off, take to painting as a profession, and become the patron of aspiring young painters from ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... likeminded with themselves. What others do, they do. They must live according to the artificial standard of their class, spending like their neighbours, regardless of the consequences, at the same time that all are, perhaps, aspiring after a style of living higher than their means. Each carries the others along with him, and they have not the moral courage to stop. They cannot resist the temptation of living high, though it may be at the expense of others; and they gradually become ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... aspiring brain For Study still there lies a craving, And what is won against the grain Is never really worth the having; This boasted Categorical Imperative is clearly vicious,— Pastors and masters, one and all, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... to the Cyrenaic doctrine, to reproductions of this doctrine in the time of Marius or in our own, their gravity and importance. It was a [142] school to which the young man might come, eager for truth, expecting much from philosophy, in no ignoble curiosity, aspiring after nothing less than an "initiation." He would be sent back, sooner or later, to experience, to the world of concrete impressions, to things as they may be seen, heard, felt by him; but with a wonderful machinery of observation, and free from ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... to refuse a reply, but the temptation to say yes, since it was really in her power was irresistible by aspiring virginity, in spite of her spleen at ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the pride of rank and intellect is the cause why the preaching of the cross is utterly despised and accounted foolishness. The lofty speculations of an aspiring intellect can with difficulty come down to the simplicity of the Gospel. The command, to come to the Saviour's feet with the humility of a little child, fills the proud heart of those who are wise in their own eyes, with indignation. They cannot endure doctrines, which ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... was put on her mettle, flattered by the appeal, made to feel she was still a living force. Also she would have done anything in the world for Minnie's girls. She consulted with her niece, well married and socially aspiring if not yet installed in the citadel. It was a happy thought; the niece had the very thing, "a delightful gentleman," lately arrived in the city. So it fell out that Boye Mayer, under the chaperonage of Mrs. Kirkham, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... get together the wrecks of my fortune; and all debts collected and paid, out of fourteen thousand pounds we had but four hundred remaining. My chief attention therefore was now to bring down the pride of my family to their circumstances; for I well knew that aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself. 'You cannot be ignorant, my children,' cried I, 'that no prudence of ours could have prevented our late misfortune; but prudence may do much in disappointing its effects. We are now poor, my fondlings, and wisdom bids us conform to our humble situation. Let us ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... a great moment, the master's moment—caught all aback with all our bulk and tonnage and infinitude of gear, and our heaven-aspiring masts two hundred feet above our heads. And our master was there, in sheeting flame, slender, casual, imperturbable, with two men—one of them a murderer—under him to pass on and enforce his will, and with a horde of inefficients and weaklings to obey that will, and pull, and haul, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... wild, the impassioned. A dreamer—a muse—filled with ambitious thoughts—proud, vain, aspiring after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his books. The glowing passages ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... God," and who sought to purchase the power of the laying on of hands with money. Simon, indeed, crazed by his incantations and ecstasies, developed megalomania in an acute form, arrogating to himself divine honours and aspiring to the adoration of the whole world. According to a contemporary legend, he eventually became sorcerer to Nero and ended his ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Bulkeley!' said the Queen; 'he never intended us any harm. We have brought him up from a boy, and have had special trial of his fidelity; ye shall not commit him.' 'We have the care of your Majesty's person,' said the Earl, 'and see more and hear more of the man than you do: he is of an aspiring mind, and lives in a remote place.' 'Before God!' replied the Queen; 'we will be sworn upon the Holy Evangelists, he never intended any harm.' And then her Majesty ran to the Bible, and kissing it, said: 'You shall not commit him; we have brought him up from a boy.' Sir Richard, however, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... straight road had been devised from the first class in the common school to the highest department of collegiate instruction. The needs of the {107} democracy had not been neglected, but wise and ample provision had been made for the ambitious and aspiring few. How completely the university has justified its existence is attested by the spectacle of both political parties competing with each other in their benevolence towards an honoured, national foundation. By the multiplying generations of Toronto graduates the name of Robert ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... is room.' It might be 'that when Christ spoke those words,' He was thinking of him—him among the rest that he had chosen, and had meant to encourage him. But Bunyan was too simply modest to gather comfort from such aspiring thoughts. Be desired to be converted, craved for it, longed for it with all his heart and soul. 'Could it have been gotten for gold,' he said, 'what would I not have given for it. Had I had a whole world it had all gone ten thousand ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... hold thy course, Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 530 The gradual paths of an aspiring change: For birth and life and death, and that strange state Before the naked powers that thro' the world Wander like winds have found a human home, All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 535 The restless wheels of being ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... furtherance of its measures, the secret of its impotence is disclosed. Even whilst it invokes their assistance, it is on the condition that they shall act exactly as much as the Government chooses, and exactly in the manner it appoints. They are to take charge of the details, without aspiring to guide the system; they are to work in a dark and subordinate sphere, and only to judge the acts in which they have themselves cooperated by their results. These, however, are not conditions on which the alliance of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... young men or to the girl chums. The doings of these merry girls made the record of their freshman year memorable indeed. The winning of the freshman prize by Anne Pierson, despite the determined opposition and plotting of Miriam Nesbit, also aspiring to that honor, Mrs. Gray's Christmas party, the winter picnic that ended in an adventure with wolves, and many other stirring events furnished plenty of excitement for ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... light of snow; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent—the unique personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influence, so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophe of his odes. In his isolation and elevation Pindar stands like some fabled heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from afar, girdled at the base with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed round with steam and vapor, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline into cold blue ether. Few things that have life dare to visit him at his grand altitude. Glorious with sunlight ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... an expression is out of place in the mouth of a princess aspiring to the highest destiny on earth. You have the morals of a dragoon. [She receives this with a shriek of laughter. He struggles with his sense of humor.] At the same time [he sits down] there is a certain coarse fun in ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... Germany, and has long been a textbook upon its subject in those countries, as well as in France. His third work was the one now translated, La Puissance Americaine, in which he has displayed, most emphatically, his admiration of our institutions, and offered them as examples to communities aspiring after rational liberty. It may be said of it, that it is the American system rendered popular ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... which I only wish to strengthen, that, here and everywhere, and never more than in the exquisite passage which Mr. Gosse only quotes to depreciate, the prose of Patmore is the prose of a poet; not prose 'incompletely executed,' and aspiring after the 'nobler order' of poetry, but adequate and achieved prose, of a very rare kind. Thought, in him, is of the very substance of poetry, and is sustained throughout at almost the lyrical pitch. There is, in these essays, a rarefied air as of the mountain-tops of meditation; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... overgrow the ground, and compete with their bell-shaped blossoms for the coveted favour of bees and butterflies. And in open glades, where for some reason or other the forest fails, tall grasses and other aspiring herbs run up apace towards the free air of heaven. Elsewhere, creepers struggle up to the sun over the stems and branches of stronger bushes or trees, which they often choke and starve by monopolizing at last all the available carbon and sunlight. And so throughout; the struggle ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... boys caused her more anxiety than all the other children combined. He was so proud, so aspiring, and yet he had not half the ability of Roy, who was rather overshadowed by the other's dashing, winning manner. For Rex could be charming when he ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... continued, glad to stab her in a vulnerable point; "you certainly have made a mistake, if you think this soul an aspiring one. A boy who excels in brute strength and force merely, a man who makes a deliberate choice between the nobler results of education and the common purposes of rude daily labor, will hardly rank with a knight of Arthur's time, even if some ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... be a tedious business, and just at present not at all an easy one. For in going to war in the cause of mind, who is aspiring to the second prize, I ought to have weapons of another make from those which I used before; some, however, of the old ones may do again. And must I then ...
— Philebus • Plato
... at the same time supplying his own; he then introduced his brother Allan, who diffidently lagged behind, and proceeded to assure the Shepherd that he had brought to see him "the greatest admirer he had on earth, and himself a young aspiring poet of some promise." Hogg warmly saluted his brother bard, and, taking both the strangers to his booth on the hill-side, the three spent the afternoon happily together, rejoicing over the viands of a small bag of provisions, and a bottle of milk, and another of whisky. Hogg often afterwards ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... adhered to the 'Red Rose' or the 'White Rose,' or who fluctuated from one to the other, became poorer, fewer, and less potent every year. When the great struggle ended at Bosworth, a large part of the greatest combatants were gone. The restless, aspiring, rich barons, who made the civil war, were broken by it. Henry VII. attained a kingdom in which there was a Parliament to advise, but scarcely a ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... to be reminded of the ferment which is moving in the world of social affairs, of the obscure but powerful tendencies which are forcing society out of its grooves and leaving it, aspiring but dubious, in new and uncharted regions. This may affect different minds in different ways. Some regret it, others rejoice in it; but all are aware of it. Time-honoured political and economic formulae are become "old clothes" for an awakened ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... over again another life, I think I would have the moral courage to refrain from aspiring for any office within the gift of the people. By no means do I believe a person should be sordid and selfish in all his actions, yet cannot a person be more useful to the public if he possesses talents in other situations ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... by the royalists during the Revolution, adding that he had found the interest of the Court so feebly and so badly defended that he had been frequently tempted to go and offer it, in himself, an aspiring champion, who knew the spirit of the age and nation. The Queen asked him what was the weapon he would ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... will stand the test, but I have seen too many brilliant and aspiring young politicians go up like a rocket and come down a burnt stick, to be very sure of any man in the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... calculated upon. He wanted a compound of roguery and folly as his tool and slave; Smith was a rogue and an unlettered man, but he was what Rigdon was not aware of—a man of bold conception, full of courage and mental energy, one of those unprincipled, yet lofty, aspiring beings, who, centuries past, would have succeeded as well as Mahomet, and who has, even in this more enlightened age, accomplished that which is ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... present, gave much content, and with the generall applause, yet it proved a most infortunate match to him and his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony of one of the greatest Princes in Germany; but must aspire to a Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... proposed stopping a day in Cincinnati, taking rooms at the Burnet House, where the first individual whom they saw at the table was our old acquaintance, Joel Slocum. Not finding his business as profitable in Lexington as he could wish, he had recently removed to Cincinnati. Here his aspiring mind had prompted him to board at the Burnet House, until he'd seen the "Ohio elephant," when he intended retiring to one of the cheaper boarding-houses. The moment he saw Mr. Graham, a grin of recognition became visible on his face, bringing ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... was erected at the sole expense of the Catholics who, abreast of the times, met at every turn the requirements of an aspiring class ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... of man was turned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deeper meaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nights or of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which is ever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant), and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell in heaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... their schooling, done their tasks, and reached their goal; because, once in the toils, they must needs go forward, or die. A very few of these toilers, Hindoos ascending towards Arahatship, Christians aspiring to certain heaven by way of certain martyrdom, have been given beforehand an exact estimate of the price they were to pay. But all others, the vast majority of those demanding of nature her divinest gifts, have mortgaged themselves blindly for an amount, and at a rate of interest, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... I do greet your excellence With letters of commission from the king. For know, my lords, the states of Christendom, Moved with remorse of these outrageous broils, Have earnestly implored a general peace Betwixt our nation and the aspiring French; And here at hand the Dauphin and his train Approacheth, to confer ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... to repose. The unusual excitement of the evening, the light, the splendor, the luxury, the guests, and among them all the figures of Claudia and the viscount, haunting memory and stimulating imagination, forbade repose. Ever, in the midst of all his busy, useful, aspiring life he was conscious, deep in his heart, of a gnawing anguish, whose name was Claudia Merlin. To-night this deep-seated anguish tortured him like the vulture of Prometheus. One vivid picture was always before his mind's eye—the sofa, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... second-rate actors have their second-rate friends and admirers, with whom they likewise spout tragedy and talk slip-slop; and so down even to us; who have our friends and admirers among spruce clerks and aspiring apprentices, who treat us to a dinner now and then, and enjoy at tenth hand the same scraps and songs and slip-slop that have been served up by our more fortunate brethren at the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... achievement as an event in the highest degree joyful and glorious, yet the author of it alone, whose valour was such that he never thought he had achieved enough, and whose search for true glory was insatiable, considered the reduction of Spain as affording but a faint idea of the hopes which his aspiring mind had conceived. He now directed his view to Africa and Great Carthage, and the glorious termination of the war, as redounding to his honour, and giving lustre to his name. Judging it therefore to be now necessary to pave the way to his object, and to conciliate the friendship ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... his work, till it stands forth the image of his ideal,—so the poet works out his states of poetic feeling. He grasps and holds and sustains them amidst the multiplicity of upflying thoughts and thick-coming fancies;—no matter how subtile or how aspiring they may be, he fastens them in the chamber of his imagination until his distant purpose is accomplished, and he has found a language for them which the world will understand. And this is where Shakspeare's art is so noble,—in that he conquers the entire universe of thought, sentiment, feeling, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... judgment, it is true, but a judgment and mercy in one. God never showed more plainly that He had great things in store for the people which should occupy this English soil, than when He brought hither that aspiring Norman race. At the same time the actual interpenetration of our Anglo-Saxon with any large amount of French words did not find place till very considerably later than this event, however it was a consequence of it. Some French words we find very soon after; but in the main ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... accomplishment of the experiment with the footprints had died away, and he had regained his usual calm of mind, he made a careful inspection of the abode, and was by no means satisfied with himself. He had experimented upon Father Absinthe with his new system of investigation, just as an aspiring orator tries his powers before his least gifted friends, not before the cleverest. He had certainly overwhelmed the old veteran by his superiority; he had literally crushed him. But what great merit, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... essential beauty of Perpendicular—the aspiring line—at its very best. The vaulting seems to carry the upward flow, as it were, of the stonework to the roof centre without any loss of the soaring effect. The beautiful windows are all modern but they are entirely in keeping with the old work. The stalls are original ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... heard him say yesterday, with a sigh, that no gentleman can be fit for office. Well, Mr. Walker is a gentleman by education and instincts; and is fastidiously tenacious of what is due a gentleman. Will his official life be a long one? I know one thing—there are several aspiring dignitaries waiting impatiently for his shoes. But those who expect to reach the Presidency by a successful administration of any of the departments, or by the bestowal of patronage, are laboring under an ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... distress of the lower classes, in consequence of the Gaulish invasion, became intolerable. They became involved in debt, and thus were in the power of their creditors. Manlius undertook to be their defender, but the envy of the patricians caused him to be accused of aspiring to the supreme power, and he was, in spite of his great services, sentenced to death and hurled from the Tarpeian rock. His error was in premature reform. But, in the year 367 B.C., the tribunes Licinius and L. Sextius secured the passage of three ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea. The intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William's half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretence of aspiring by arms to the papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the King's bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; and it was with his ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... deed of thrift. Is there no cheese to pare, no flint to skin, No tin to mend, no glass to be put in, No housewife worthy of a morning visit, Her rags and sacks and bottles to solicit? Lo! the blind sow's precarious pursuit Of the aspiring oak's familiar fruit!— 'Twould more advantage any man to steal This easy victim's undefended meal Than tell Creed Haymond he has wit, and so Expose the state to his ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... anxious visage relaxed into a smile as he protested that he agreed with her entirely. "At the same time," he added, "there does appear to be some sort of aspiring tendency in the young and strong, to attempt the repression of which would seem to be useless, even if desirable. Do you know, Madame, while on a voyage some years ago I saw a boy who used to dive off the fore-yard-arm into the sea, and who went regularly every morning before breakfast ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Drusus into the Illyricum; but the Romans did not advance beyond the Danube, and Hermann remained unmolested in Northern Germany. Shortly after, however, Hermann was killed by his own relatives, being accused, as it would seem, of aspiring to absolute dominion. He died at the age of thirty-seven, in the twenty-first year of our era, after being for twelve years the leader ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... same herd, and each aspiring to be the leader and master, they finally engaged in a fierce battle. An old Frog, who sat on the bank of a stream near by, began to groan and to quake with fear. A thoughtless young Frog said to the old one: ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... structure, even more than the artless gusto of "Sister Carrie," produces a penetrating and powerful effect. Jennie is no mere individual; she is a type of the national character, almost the archetype of the muddled, aspiring, tragic, fate-flogged mass. And the scene in which she is set is brilliantly national too. The Chicago of those great days of feverish money-grabbing and crazy aspiration may well stand as the epitome of America, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and headaches; Nature herself sufficiently declaring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of that celestial and sleepless traveler. We deny not that there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the outset especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It is flattering to get the start of a lazy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various |
