"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... naturally you might think that the loss of the will wouldn't amount to much, one way or the other; but it's like this: the governor and I are very different; I know we've got plenty of ducats, and that's enough for me, but not for him; he is ambitious. It has always galled him that we were not in the direct line of descent from the main branch of the Mainwarings; and it has been his one great ambition since the death of old Ralph Mainwaring, Hugh's father, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... to him, whose life was labor, unproductive use of time was a crime. He thought it a matter of course that his son should become a laboring man like himself, and it is little less than a miracle that this did not happen. The mother, to be sure, fostered the boy's more ambitious hopes; the death of the father in Hebbel's fourteenth year was perhaps a blessing in disguise; undoubtedly the happiest chance in Hebbel's boyhood, so far as external events are concerned, was the fact that he won the favor of a real teacher in his schoolmaster Dethlefsen, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of Isaac, in whose name he sued for Rebekah's fair hand. He didn't say that Isaac was handsome, virtuous, talented or ambitious, but he said, "the Lord hath blessed my master and he is very great; and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and maid servants and men servants, and camels and asses," and unto his son Isaac "hath he given all that he hath," for this astute man of the world seemed ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... satisfactory to Custer. Being employed by the town gave him an official standing, perhaps not so distinguished as that of a policeman, but still eminently worth while; and Mr. Shrimplin added not a little to the sense of its importance by dilating on the intrigues of ambitious rivals who desired to wrest his contract from him; and he impressed Custer, who frequently accompanied him on his rounds, with the wisdom of keeping the lamps that shone upon the homes of members of the town council in especially good order. Furthermore, there were possibilities ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... of weight and what with the daily ocean swim which we both enjoyed, his cheeks took on color and he became as brown as an Indian. If he had passed the summer at the White Mountains he could not have looked any hardier. He made many friends at the Y.M.C.A. They were all ambitious boys and they woke him up wonderfully. I was careful to follow him closely in this new life and made it a point to see the boys myself and to make him tell me at the end of each day just what he had been about. Dick was a boy I could trust to tell me every detail. He was ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... occupied with the new scenes around her, but her Scottish cousin took up every moment open to conversation. He was older than Norman, and had just taken his degree, and he talked with that superior aplomb, which a few years bestow at their time of life, without conceit, but more hopeful and ambitious, and with higher spirits ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Horace's letters with the lurid furnace-glow of his genius; Sir George held the serene lamp of the scholar above the same letters, and lo, we have two pieces that can only die when the language dies! What a feat for a mere letter-writer to achieve! Let ambitious correspondents take example by Horace Walpole, and learn that simplicity is the first, best—nay, the only—object to be aimed at ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... They were constantly quarrelling among each other to decide who should rule the city. The victorious nobleman then assumed a sort of Kingship over all his neighbours and governed the town until he in turn was killed or driven away by still another ambitious nobleman. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of a most ambitious disposition, and desirous of making just as much time each day as though their lives depended on reaching a certain city in the Southland by a settled date—and yet they had the whole winter before them, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... stood a foot and eight inches high, measuring nine feet, four inches around the middle. The assembled donors of the cheese were so proud of it that they asked royal permission to exhibit it on a round of country fairs. The Queen assented to this ambitious request, perhaps prompted by the exhibition-minded Albert. The publicity-seeking cheesemongers assured Her Majesty that the gift would be returned to her just as soon as it had been exhibited. But the Queen didn't want it back after it was show-worn. The donors began ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... and Stein Skaptason, were ill-pleased at not being allowed to do as they liked. Stein was a remarkably handsome man, dexterous at all feats, a great poet, splendid in his apparel, and very ambitious of distinction. His father, Skapte, had composed a poem on King Olaf, which he had taught Stein, with the intention that he should bring it to King Olaf. Stein could not now restrain himself from making the king reproaches in word and speech, both in verse and prose. Both he and Thorod ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... larger capacity and a greater dynamic capability. His pie is larger—has more and bigger plums. When we contrast the present JACK with the past, we blush for the comparison. When we encounter him in civic office or in the revenue service, we tremble for the plums. He is grasping, remorseless, ambitious. The old JACK was satisfied to sit in his corner and eat his pie; but this one seeks a pie of dimensions so extravagant as to fill the remotest corners of the globe; and, what is worse, he is—any thing but ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... that lady to the ballroom, he formulated the following entry in his notebook to be jotted down at the first opportunity: "Credit, dress-suit account, one dance with the wife of a multi-millionaire—a social arbiter. An event undreamed of, even in my most ambitious ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... with some of the members of Congress we have learned that an idea prevails throughout the South that the colored women are more intelligent, ambitious and energetic than the men, and that while it is easy enough to keep the men from exercising too much ambition in the matter of politics, it will not be easy to control the women. When talking with these same men about the white women of the South, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and correcting that little sordid appetite, so utterly inconsistent with all pretences to a hero. A youth in the heat of blood may plead with some shew of reason, that he is not able to subdue his lusts; An ambitious man may use the same arguments for his love of power, or perhaps other arguments to justify it. But, excess of avarice hath neither of these pleas to offer; it is not to be justified, and cannot ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... folks in Westphalia may say, I've a great mind to marry miss Quoltz. For of all the dear angels that live near the Weser, Miss Quoltz is the stoutest and tallest; Tho' of all German barons ambitious to please her, I know I'm the shortest and smallest." How I should like the marriage waltz To dance with thee, my ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... resided, his father being a 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. What great ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the agonies of an ambitious, indolent, doubting, self-accusing man,—of a man who has a skeleton in his cupboard as to which he can ask for sympathy from no one,—will understand what feelings were at work within the bosom of Sir Thomas when his Percycross friends left him alone in his chamber. The moment ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... studied under eminent professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into the mazes of literature and philosophy. He was conscious of his marvellous gifts, and was, of course, ambitious of distinction. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... other than the political are reflected in the letters. From them we can gather a picture of how an ambitious Roman gentleman of some inherited wealth took to the legal profession as the regular means of becoming a public figure; of how his fortune might be increased by fees, by legacies from friends, clients, and even complete strangers who thus sought to ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... extremists, and the rebellious demonstrations of the Byzantine populace, that drove him in 512 to abandon this policy and adopt a monophysitic programme. His consequent unpopularity in the European provinces was utilized by an ambitious man, named Vitalian, to organize a dangerous rebellion, in which he was assisted by a horde of "Huns'' (514-515); it was finally suppressed by a naval victory won by the general Marinus. The financial ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had been wanting to place The Times upon the pinnacle of preeminence among journals, this famous trial firmly established it there, and ever since it has been looked up to as an oracle of the commercial world. But The Times was not contented to rest quietly on its oars. It was ambitious, and looked farther afield. In 1845, its vigor, enterprise, and disregard of expense were exemplified in a remarkable manner. The Times had been in the habit of sending a special courier to Marseilles, to bring its Indian despatches, and thus anticipate the regular ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... torture, to cows. Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week, without trying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at a simian tea. A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books on abstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them. Most of the ambitious simians who try it—out of pride—go to sleep. The typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really too jumpy by nature ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... of certain subterranean lakes which exist in Carniola, a country subject at this time to Austria, there are to be found batrachians far more ambitious than our frog—namely, the proteans. These cumulate rather than change: they become reptiles without ceasing to be fishes, if I may so express it; they develop lungs as they grow up, and yet keep their gills. I could tell you a thousand ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... career furnishes a curious instance of the lavish expenditure which ambitious sovereigns formerly required on such grand occasions. Let us quote his biographer's own words: "Son entree dans Rome fut superbe; il etait dans un carosse ouvert, en forme de caleche, tout brillant d'or, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... I was taking in at that time, but it found me—inexpressive; what I was saying on my return to England gave me no intimation of the broad conceptions growing in my mind. I came back to be one of the many scores of energetic and ambitious young men who were parroting "Efficiency," stirring up people and more particularly stirring up themselves with the utmost vigor,—and all the time within their secret hearts more than a little at ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... because she batted her eyes and kept putting one foot ahead uh the other. I could 'a' killed her. But she's all right, that old girl. The way she led out down that black coulee last night wasn't slow! Say, she's an ambitious old party. I wish you was riding point with me, Rowdy. The Silent One talks just about as much as that old cow. He sure loves to live up to ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... slander, raised and kept alive by that section of the land south of the imaginary line, to wit: that the Negro was ambitious for "racial equality," only is entitled to reference in these pages for the purpose of according it the contempt due it. That the whites of the country have not a complete monopoly of those unpleasing creatures known ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which had lifted them ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... granted—their marriage cannot be lawful—the Pope, who will do much for so godly a prince, can set aside this unchristian union, in respect of the pre-contract. Bethink you well, my liege," continued the Earl, kindling with a new train of ambitious thoughts, to which the unexpected opportunity of pleading his cause personally had given rise—"bethink you how you choose betwixt the Douglas and me. He is powerful and mighty, I grant. But George of Dunbar ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Universal Deluge came pitching and tossing round the corner—rather an ambitious car. The foreground was occupied by the water, with the head of a drowning man throwing up his arms, and the indication of another entirely submerged. The waves were beating against a steep bank up which a tigress was climbing, carrying ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... garden studies. From him I inherited some of that taste which finds a magic attraction in dictionaries and grammars; and I only wish that I had properly mastered about half the languages in which it was the delight of my girlhood to dabble. As yet, however, I only looked at the 'grammar corner' with ambitious eyes, till one day there came upon me the desire to learn Russian. I asked my father for a Russian grammar, and he pointed out the only one that he possessed. My father seldom refused to lend us his books, and made no inquiries as to why we wanted them; but he was intensely strict about their proper ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Psamatik were coincident with a time of extreme trouble and confusion in Asia, in the course of which the Assyrian Monarchy came to an end, and south-western Asia was partitioned between the Medes and the Babylonians. A tempting field was laid open for an ambitious prince, who might well have dreamt of Syrian or even Mesopotamian conquest, and of recalling the old glories of Seti, Thothmes, and Amenhotep. Psamatik did go so far as to make an attack upon Philistia, but met with so little success that he was induced to restrain ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... that the present one could not be added on to the description of Hunt: it is an alternative form, ultimately rejected. Its tone is ultra-sentimental, and perhaps on that account it was condemned. The simile at the close of the present stanza is ambitious, but ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... of English poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification, which is such as his contemporaries practised, without any attempt at innovation or improvement, seldom wants either melody ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... coast scarcely extended beyond the Ram Head; and there began the harvest in which Mr. Bass was ambitious to place the first reaping-hook. The new coast was traced three hundred miles; and instead of trending southward to join itself to Van Diemen's Land, as Captain Furneaux had supposed, he found it, beyond a certain point, to take a direction nearly opposite, and to assume the appearance ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... course, he had observed the strategy of small bodies of troops determined by a swift consultation of officers; but this was an army in itself, or had been, and on the part of Kohlvihr it was very clear that personal matters were powerfully to the fore. Kohlvihr was enraged; Kohlvihr was ambitious. Big Belt was aware that, given a free hand and a free cable, he could make Kohlvihr a loathsome monster in the eyes of the world, this merely by ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... ideas. She was destined for higher things (if there can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a barbed-wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks would have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, rising superior to mere beauty, she must establish something in the nature of a salon—the only one ...
— Options • O. Henry
... little as she replied, discontentedly, "Oh, it isn't that, I assure you; the truth is, I am ambitious, Cyn. I suppose I forgot it, slightly, while I was so interested in 'C;' but I cannot be content with a mere working on from day to day, in the same old routine, and ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... found in them a pleasure and a companionship that has lasted through my life. Thus it happened that I made considerable progress. So much so that the good Bishop, my great-uncle, often flattered me with the ambitious hopes of some day filling his Episcopal chair—a hope that, I need not say, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... evil properties were to her and her friends of no consequence as they had never reflected on serious subjects. She also pressed the attendance of several annuals of showy appearance. Intrinsic merit had no value with her, who had no guide but fashion, and was ambitious only of becoming a leader in dissipation or a patroness of talent, which would be the means of making her ridiculous, and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... upon the great canvas, while Robert's days were spent either in the luxurious library at the Hall, or in strolling about the country listening to tales of trouble, and returning like a tweed-suited ministering angel to carry Raffles Haw's help to the unfortunate. It was not an ambitious life, but it was one which was very congenial to his weak ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... admit him, Cozen, he's rich and personable, very good humour'd, and no Fool: His aspiring at me does indeed show a prodigious stock of Vanity; but 'tis a failing, People o'the best Sense are liable to, and I had rather prove a Man too ambitious than to have ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... bridge is builded o'er the gulf Between two cities, some ambitious fool, Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leave To push his clumsy feet upon the span, That men in after years may single him, Saying: "Behold the fool who first went o'er!" So be it when, as now ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 historic garb of Lady Godiva. A glance at the princess's form in ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... he has had his heels rubbed with the cure he may be more ambitious. A valuable fellow, for having given me a stupendous idea—but a bit indiscreet, eh? Never mind," he added, seeing the piteous look on Septimus's face. "I'll have discretion for the two of us. I'll not breathe a word ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... long entertained ambitious views towards the crown; his uncle Richard, it is said, in default of issue to himself, having expressed the intention of declaring Lincoln his successor. The Lord Lovel, too, a bitter enemy of the reigning prince, who had fled to the court of Burgundy ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, like every man who is falling back in the world, he was occasionally in arrears. Paying taxes is not like the honors awarded or the processions regulated by Clarencieux; no man is ambitious of precedency there; and if a laggard pace in that duty is to be received as evidence of pauperism, nine tenths of the English people might occasionally be classed as paupers. With respect to his liberation ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... climbed; and never left the struggle till the storm had gone down, it is to be hoped for ever. This was his destiny, but it might have been his choice, and he was not without the reward, which, to an ambitious mind conscious of its eminent powers, might be more than equivalent to the reluctant patronage of the throne. To his habits legal distinction would have been only a bounty upon his silence; his limbs would have been fettered by the ermine; but ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Autobiography a fixed idea to "gain over" as many people as possible, to attach them to her interests; partly because of the opposition to the Czarina's circle, which gradually came to characterize the "Jeune Cour," but specially in the service of those vague, ambitious foreshadowings which from her first years in Russia had possessed her mind. Clear-sighted, with a keen sense of her husband's inadequacy to his position, warned by the implacable hostility of his mistress Elizabeth Vorontsoff and her relations, above all with a passionate thirst ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... "Not quite so ambitious; short stories to begin with and then special articles for the newspapers—anything that promised to bring in a little money, but ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... know not, nor do I. But this we know, if we know anything: That we may laugh and fight and sing And of our transience here make offering To an orient Word that will not be erased, Or, save in incommunicable gleams Too permanent for dreams, Be found or known. No tonic and ambitious irritant Of increase or of want Has made an otherwise insensate waste Of ages overthrown A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste Of other ages that are still to be Depleted and rewarded variously Because a few, by fate's economy, Shall seem to move the world the ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... occasions of her appearance at court functions, and had at last retired to the Archduke's estates at Konopisht, where she led the secluded life of the ebenburtige, still chafing, rumor had it, and more than ever jealous and ambitious for ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... born a peasant. Originally she was the wife of a steward in one of those great families of Rome whose state and traditions were princely. Elsie, as her figure and profile and all her words and movements indicated, was of a strong, shrewd, ambitious, and courageous character, and well disposed to turn to advantage every gift with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... The patient herself was described by superficial observers as being bright, sociable, well-informed and very ambitious. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... is seen wherever the soul reacts powerfully upon itself. The gallant would clothe his mistress in silks, would deck her out in soft Eastern fabrics, though he and she must lie on a truckle-bed. The ambitious dreamer sees himself at the summit of power, while he slavishly prostrates himself in the mire. The tradesman stagnates in his damp, unhealthy shop, while he builds a great mansion for his son to inherit prematurely, only to be ejected ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... sarcastically. "But do you realize that that involves expense? I'm a comparatively poor man, just getting a start in my profession, and with a young and socially ambitious wife!" ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... men owe their success in life to judicious and liberal advertising. In this age of strong competition in the various avenues of trade, he who does not advertise his wares will probably be outdone by a more ambitious dealer, with perhaps a poorer article, who advertises liberally. People go where they are invited, and the merchant who advertises freely, places his store and windows in attractive order, and leaves ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... herself a great favorite. She was very intelligent and active, and very ambitious to learn whatever the minister's wife was willing to teach her. She also took great interest in making herself useful in every possible way, and displayed in her household avocations, and in all her other duties, a ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... apprehending him. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind. He smiled, and said, 'I have had no ambitious thoughts in it[544].' The room was decorated with a great variety of maps and prints. Among others, was Hogarth's print of Wilkes grinning, with a cap of liberty on a pole by him. That too was a curious circumstance in the scene this morning; such a contrast was Wilkes to the above groupe. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... to set pen to paper. And now, suddenly, the spring had been touched in me, the time was come. I was grateful for the fluke by which I had witnessed on the terrace that evocative scene. I looked forward to reading the MS. of 'The Fan'—to-morrow, at latest. I was not wildly ambitious. I was not inordinately vain. I knew I couldn't ever, with the best will in the world, write like Mr. George Meredith. Those wondrous works of his, seething with wit, with poetry and philosophy and what not, never had beguiled me with the sense that I might do something similar. I had full consciousness ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... lost in the mazes of the improved method of spelling, and the class brought dishonor upon the really conscientious and ambitious teacher. ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... as to have freed himself from a slavish subjection unto those prejudicial opinions which custom and education do with too much tyranny impose.—If the doctrine of witchcraft should be carried up to a height, and the inquisition after it should be intrusted in the hands of ambitious, covetous and malicious men, it would prove of far more fatal consequence unto the lives and safety of mankind, than that ancient, heathenish custom of sacrificing men unto idol gods; insomuch that we stand in need of another Hercules ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... roses. It had its patch of grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names applied to many familiar objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful and ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings. In place of the prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the satisfaction of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the Widow's embroidery, or a sofa luxurious ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... planning our future lives, both of us were planning, though only she talked about it. She said she should like to marry an archdeacon, and write his charges; and you know, my dear, she never was married, and, for aught I know, she never spoke to an unmarried archdeacon in her life. I never was ambitious, nor could I have written charges, but I thought I could manage a house (my mother used to call me her right hand), and I was always so fond of little children—the shyest babies would stretch out their little arms ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... displayed to an attentive reader, in colors as dark and appalling as other features of the popish system are among us, by the recent exposures of the impudent arrogance of the murderer Bedini, and the ambitious and miserly spirit of his particular friend, the Romish Archbishop ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... the mode, wore the high-heeled shoes that give such a dainty look to the foot and gait, and came into a room with a great effusion of fashionableness; yet she was not in the least what she seemed. She had a great deal of what is more pleasing than mere appearance, and that is character. She was ambitious and energetic. She did tatting when she did nothing else—said it concealed her lack of repose and liability to fidget. She was able to draw la quintessence de tout: she could make a mountain-spring of a mole-hill. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and the tribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and man? Let a race the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a river or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it pass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. But if ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, with design to subdue and enslave the population they boldly invade, then all the invaded arise in wrath and defiance—the neighbors are changed into foes. And therefore this ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... railroad, a perfect army of workmen were assembled, awaiting their orders for the day. Graders, tie-men, track-layers and construction corps, were already on the spot, and they too seemed imbued with the same spirit of enthusiasm which filled their more wealthy and ambitious neighbors in the city. As may readily be imagined, crime and immorality followed hand in hand with the march of improvement. The gambler and the harlot plied their vocations in the full light of day, and as yet unrebuked by the ruling powers of a community, too newly located to assume ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... queue that made him always look the chevalier. She treated him, in all, less like a father than a lover, exceedingly proud of him, untiring of his countless tales of campaign and court, uplifted marvellously with his ambitious dreams of State preferment. For General Turner was but passing the time in Maam till by favour promised a foreign office was found for ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... I couldn't live at Twybridge. I have my way to make, mother, and the place for that is London. You know I am ambitious. Trust me for a year or two, and see the result. I depend upon your help in this whole affair. Don't refuse it me. I have done with Whitelaw, and I have done with Twybridge: now comes London. You can't regard me ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... here express my grateful remembrance of Lord Somerville's kindness to me, at a very early period. He was the first person of high rank that took particular notice of me in the way most flattering to a young man, fondly ambitious of being distinguished for his literary talents; and by the honour of his encouragement made me think well of myself, and aspire to deserve it better. He had a happy art of communicating his varied knowledge of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... frustrated her plans by deposing Anthimus and consecrating Mennas in his place. But Theodora had not given up her intrigues, and she strove to involve in her net the Roman See itself. In the train of Agapetus at Constantinople was the ambitious deacon Vigilius. She sought to win him by promising him the Roman See. She offered him a great sum of money, and all her powerful support in attaining the papal dignity, if he would bind himself thereupon to abrogate ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... of the little ones had taken his first ambitious flight to the oriole's tree, where he must and should be fed and comforted, in spite of the hostile reception of its gayly dressed proprietor. The father took upon himself this duty, and many times during the day the above-mentioned scene was reenacted, loud blackbird calls, husky baby notes, the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... Napoleon, as he held within his 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 pomp and circumstance of that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the choice of Parliament-men; for I said {27} not that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest with Majesty: neither dare I find {28} that the House was weakened and ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... aversion with which he had long witnessed the progress of this unwelcome intruder. The increasing influence of the king in Germany, his authority with the Protestant states, the unambiguous proofs which he gave of his ambitious views, which were of a character calculated to excite the jealousies of all the states of the Empire, awakened in the Elector's breast a thousand anxieties, which the imperial emissaries did not fail skilfully to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... melancholy man should mate himself with a sprightly woman, and vice versa; for otherwise they will soon grow weary of the monotony of each other's company. By the same rule should the choleric and the patient be united, and the ambitious and the humble; for the opposites of their natures not only produce pleasurable excitement, but each keeps the other in a wholesome check. In the size and form of the parties the same principles hold good. Tall women ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... ambitious; each annual exhibition was crowded, to listen to the speeches "of Coriolanus, Iago, Brutus, and Cassius" by "raw lads from the village and adjoining farms," in all the bravery of local militia uniform—blue coats "faced with red, matross swords, and hats ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... remarkable in her, of a certain kind of high resolution. She made one apprehend that she meant to do something for herself. She was long-necked and near-sighted and striking, and I thought I had never seen sweet seventeen in a form so hard and high and dry. She was cold and affected and ambitious, and she carried an eyeglass with a long handle, which she put up whenever she wanted not to see. She had come out, as the phrase is, immensely; and yet I felt as if she were surrounded with a spiked iron railing. What she meant to do for herself was to marry, and it was the ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... known, but there was some story about an engagement at Poonah the previous warm weather. Noon was rich, and he cared for the girl; but she did not return the feeling. In fact, there was some one else. It appears that the girl's people were ambitious and poor, and that Noon had promised large settlements. At all events, the engagement was a known affair, and gossips whispered that Noon knew about the some one else, and would not give her up. He was, ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty weapon. Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way, and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the weight of the ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... he said, with good-will. "Here in the East, I thought they aspired to nothing better than the two; but they are ambitious, and play with royal fours. Let ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of Heth and Cooney was as these facts indicate. If Thornton Heth had married an ambitious woman, and he had, his sister Molly had displayed less acumen. The Cooney stock, unlike the Thompson as it was, deplorably resembled a thousand other stocks then reproducing its kind in this particular city. The War had flattened it out, cut it half through at the roots, and it had never recovered, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purpose of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tried to taunt me in return with being in love with Arthur and Aylesford. I only smiled, and walked on. Then he sprang after me, and vowed I should not leave him so,—that he loved me madly, spite of my scorn, spite of my foolish words. He knew well I did not love Arthur, that I was ambitious only. So was he,—and so determined in his purpose, that he was sure to succeed in it, spite of everything. "For there are few things," he added, "that can stand against my settled will. Beware, then, how you cross it, sweet Lina!" I shook my cloak loose from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... only drawback is that if he should be translated to "another place," it would be found that the borough had become accustomed to such a scale of expenditure from its member that "no one but a very rich and ambitious man would venture to come forward as a candidate there." It offers, however, a splendid chance for a Socialist who can make unlimited promises as to the benefits that he and his friends could confer by taking the money of ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... a book by a friend of his, a great friend, which he himself believed rather clever, and had in fact found very charming, but as to which—if it really wouldn't bore Mr. Berridge—he should so like the verdict of some one who knew. His friend was awfully ambitious, and he thought there was something in it—with all of which might he send ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... is an ideal negro; it is the negro refined by white culture, elevated by white blood, instructed even by white iniquity;—the negro among negroes is a coarse, grinning, flat-footed, thick-skulled creature, ugly as Caliban, lazy as the laziest of brutes, chiefly ambitious to be of no use to any in the world. View him as you will, his stock in trade is small;—he has but the tangible instincts of all creatures,—love of life, of ease, and of offspring. For all else, he must go to school to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... is a title that might be given to many a son of a wise father. The very energy and prudence of the parent, especially when employed on ambitious or worldly objects, seems to cause distaste, and even opposition, in the youth on whom his father's pursuits have been prematurely forced. Seeing the evil, and weary of the good, it often requires a strong sense of duty to prevent him from flying to the contrary extreme, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... with a great fund of general reading, and habits of constant application. My uncle, who, having no children of his own, began to be ambitious for me, formed great expectations of my career at Oxford. I staid there three years, and did nothing! I did not gain a single prize, nor did I attempt anything above the ordinary degree. The fact is, that nothing seemed to me worth the labour of ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... syndic, so that Malicorne was the king of the gay youth of Orleans, having two thousand four hundred livres to scatter, squander, and waste on follies of every kind. But, quite contrary to Manicamp, Malicorne was terribly ambitious. He loved from ambition; he spent money out of ambition; and he would have ruined himself for ambition. Malicorne had determined to rise, at whatever price it might cost, and for this, at whatever price it did cost, he had given himself a mistress and a friend. The mistress, Mademoiselle ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was incapable of examining the proofs of a religion, which depends on the laborious investigation of historic evidence, and speculative theology. He was still more incapable of feeling the mild influence of the Gospel, which persuades and purifies the heart of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a perpetual violation of moral and Christian duties: his hands were stained with blood, in peace as well as in war; and, as soon as Clovis had dismissed a synod of the Gallican Church, he calmly assassinated all the princes of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... state, Don Lucas Alaman, in a very able and elaborate report made to Congress, sets forth the ambitious designs of the American government, and the proceedings of its agents with regard to this province. He also recommends salutary measures for the purpose of retaining possession and preventing further encroachments; which the Congress seems to have taken into serious consideration, as very ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... Mrs. Eustice warmly. "I must have a special talk with Betty soon, for she has an ambitious program before her. And here are Libbie and Frances from the state I remember so ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... intensity and passiveness of the spirit are as natural in their attraction and repulsion as the elements, whose harmony is only patent on the surface. Consistency is superficial, narrow, one-sided. I am both ambitious, therefore, and contented. My ambition is that of the earth, the ever producing and resuscitating earth, doing the will of God, combatting the rasure of time; and my contentment is that of the majestic pines, faring alike in shade and sunshine, in calm and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Her ambitious plans for her city forgotten, Dido wandered through the streets, mad with love and unable to conceal her passion. She led AEneas among the walls and towers, made feasts for him, and begged again and again to hear the story of his wandering. At other times she fondled Ascanius, leaving her youths ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Ambitious aims? Of course. Easy to do? Far from it. But the future's at stake. The nation will not accept anything less than ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... clouded weather, on the 14th of March we gladly stood out of King George's Sound on our course to Keeling Island. Farewell, Australia! you are a rising child, and doubtless some day will reign a great princess in the South; but you are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... importance for the class I would persuade than have the terrors of the deep for a Thames water-man. How many thousand householders about this city have a "bit of glass" devoted to geraniums and fuchsias and the like! They started with more ambitious views, but successive disappointments have taught modesty, if not despair. The poor man now contents himself with anything that will keep tolerably green and show some spindling flower. The fact is, that hardy plants under glass demand skilful treatment—all their surroundings are unnatural, ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... and Znaniecki is in a real sense a study of the Polish community in Europe and America. Less ambitious studies have been made of individual immigrant communities. Several religious communities composed of isolated and unassimilated groups, such as the German Mennonites, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... unconsciously, he being a long-winded individual, and invariably commencing his remarks with "Er-hem! Ladies and gentleman, a great Greek philosopher once said"—or "There is an old proverb." He essayed to give us "The dear Homeland," but being interrupted in one of his most ambitious vocal flights by a giddy young officer (and a gentleman) throwing a bundle of music and a bunch of vegetables at him, hastily finished his song, and in a dignified voice requested us to conclude the proceedings by singing "God Save the Quing." This was the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... your ambitious pride does not ruin you both. There is the buggy. Be so good as to give me my fur gauntlets out of the drawer of my ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... last time we met," the doctor said with a laugh, "and I told you then that a foothold on the Baltic was so necessary to Russia, that she would have accepted the alliance of the Prince of Darkness himself to get it. As to Augustus, I don't defend him. He was ambitious, as I suppose most of us are. He thought he saw an opportunity of gaining territory. He has found that he has made a mistake, and will of course lose a province. But Charles' persecution of him goes beyond all bounds. Never before did a sovereign insist upon a nation consenting to dethrone its king ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... called by a name that sounds like a contradiction in terms, Bonne d'Armagnac. From that time forth, throughout all this monstrous period—a very nightmare in the history of France—he is no more than a stalking-horse for the ambitious Gascon. Sometimes the smoke lifts, and you can see him for the twinkling of an eye, a very pale figure; at one moment there is a rumour he will be crowned king; at another, when the uproar has subsided, he will be heard still crying out for justice; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... two plays of 'Henry IV' had figured as a spirited young man in 'Richard II;' he was now represented as weighed down by care and age. With him are contrasted (in part i.) his impetuous and ambitious subject Hotspur and (in both parts) his son and heir Prince Hal, whose boisterous disposition drives him from Court to seek adventures among the haunters of taverns. Hotspur is a vivid and fascinating portrait of a hot-headed soldier, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... lying servant or bold sycophant. We are not wanton or satirical. These have their time and places fit, but we Sad hours and serious studies to reprieve, Have taught severe Philosophy to smile, The Senses' rash contentions we compose, And give displeas'd ambitious Tongue her due: Here's all; judicious friends, accept what is not ill. Who are not such, let them ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Unweeting gild the tarnish'd lace; Here, by the sacred bramble tinged, My petticoat is doubly fringed. Be witness for me, nymph divine, I never robb'd thee with design; Nor will the zealous Hannah pout To wash thy injured offering out. But stop, ambitious Muse, in time, Nor dwell on subjects too sublime. In vain on lofty heels I tread, Aspiring to exalt my head; With hoop expanded wide and light, In vain I 'tempt too high a flight. Me Phoebus [29] in a midnight dream [30] Accosting, said, "Go shake your cream [31] Be humbly-minded, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the humourist," he murmured, "who is ambitious to write a tragedy—and vice versa. The only sane man is he who is ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did not always understand him wholly, but she knew that the man she loved was something more than the world at large believed him to be, and there was a thrill of pride in the thought which delighted her inmost soul. She, too, was ambitious, but her ambition was all for him. She felt that there was little room for common aspirations in his position or in her own. All that high birth, and wealth, and personal consideration could give, they both had abundantly, beyond their utmost wishes; anything they could desire beyond that ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... your age, I desired to shine, as far as I was able, in every part of life; and was as attentive, to my manners, my dress, and my air, in company on evenings, as to my books, and my tutor in the mornings. A young fellow should be ambitious to shine in everything; and, of the two, rather overdo than underdo. These things are by no means trifles; they are of infinite consequence to those who are to be thrown into the great world, and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice as to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere critic, and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the fellows who have failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who really can paint, or play, or compose seldom ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the creator of the world, is represented with four human heads and eight hands; in one hand he holds the scriptures, in the others, various idols. He is not worshipped in any temple, having lost this prerogative on account of his ambitious desire to find out the Supreme Being. However, after repenting of his folly, it was permitted that the Brahmins might celebrate some festivals ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... arrival of a number of Scotch families in his region, bringing with them customs and fashions which to Daniel Boone were very annoying. They began to cut down the glorious old forest, to break up the green sward of the prairies, to rear more ambitious houses than the humble home of the pioneer; they assumed airs of superiority, introduced more artificial styles of living, and brought in the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... of this family seem to have been content with a very modest position and very unromantic occupations, the later members have become more ambitious. ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... forming his staff and thoroughly 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 ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... 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 quiet ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... enjoyed myself, what I thought of his country, and if I did not feel hungry; when a pic-nic dinner was spread, and we all set to at cooked plantains and pombe, ending with a pipe of his best tobacco. Bit by bit Rumanika became more interested in geography, and seemed highly ambitious of gaining a world-wide reputation through the medium of my pen. At his invitation we now crossed over the spur to the Ingezi Kagera side, when, to surprise me, the canoes I had come up the lake in appeared before us. They had gone out of the lake at its northern end, paddled into, and then ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the future of such an energetic and ambitious young man was easily predicted by his friends and acquaintances, and the predictions have been verified. It was believed that he would succeed in life, become a very useful member of society, and "make ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... the ears of Leoncico, who had laid his head in full content on his master's knee. "I am always Vasco Nunez to you, amigo," he said easily, "as you very well know. Pizarro is a bulldog for bravery, and he has a head on his shoulders. Also he is ambitious, and this will give him a chance ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... would only give him a free hand he would design us something which would not only be fairly easy to build, but would also be safe and comfortable, and quite capable of conveying us all to any part of the world we might choose as our destination. This struck me as a far too ambitious project for five men to undertake; but when, later on, we again discussed the matter, with a chart of the Pacific before us, and I discovered that the Sandwich Islands, the nearest civilised land, lay some fourteen hundred miles distant, I changed my ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... is a sweet young woman, just what I should wish for a child of mine to be. And Horatia, my godchild, will turn out very well, if a sharp hand is kept over her. But she takes after me, she is daring and ambitious, and requires a firm hand at the helm. Read this to her, with my love, and I dare say she will only laugh at it. If she marries to my liking, she will be down for a good thing in my will, some day. God bless ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... so strongly treated that in composition one scarce took on more importance than another. When Arras and other Flemish towns, as well as Paris and certain French towns, developed the industry and employed more ambitious artists, the designs became more crowded, and the tendency was to multiply figures in an effort to crowd as many as possible into the space. When architecture appeared in the design, towers and battlements were crowded with peeping heads in delightful lack of ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... left Pryndale things seem much changed and for the worse. Papa is all out of sorts with what he terms the disloyalty of the people. He insists we are being driven into a wicked war by a few hot-headed men together with those who are so ambitious they would sacrifice their country. I wish I knew the right of it. People who used to be friendly now look the other way. Only the other day Gobber's urchins were playing by the road when I rode past their cabin and the dirty imps made faces ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... IV. by doing some things in fresco for him in the portico of St Peter's; for although in the Byzantine style of the time, they were not without merit. After he had finished a St Francis at Ganghereto, a place above Terranuova in the Valdarno, he devoted himself to sculpture, as he was of an ambitious spirit, and he studied with such diligence that he succeeded much better than he had done in painting; for although his first sculptures were in the Byzantine style, as may be seen in four figures in wood of a Deposition from the Cross in the Pieve, and some other figures in relief which ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... magazine consisted of articles and stories in solid unity, which formed the bulk of the issue. In front of this content, and after it, pages with advertisements were attached. The other interpretation, which suggested itself to the less ambitious reader, was that the magazine consisted of a heap of entertaining advertisement pages, between which the reading matter was sandwiched. But in any case there was nowhere mutual interference. The articles stood alone, and the automobiles, crackers, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... to many an ambitious man about to commit a crime or betray a trust. Cowardice or conscience may unnerve him; or on the other hand he may be fearless and willing, and yet not able to go on, realizing suddenly the thing will ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... just what the Te Puna community lacked. Marsden did not return for more than four years, and in the meantime the settlers were left with no head whatever. Kendall was the cleverest of the group, and his ambitious spirit chafed at the restrictions imposed by his distant superior. He bore a commission of the Peace from the Governor of New South Wales, but his magisterial powers were mostly exercised on runaway sailors. In the mission his vote counted for ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... its disgusting manifestations, for the triviality of Lindsay, for the fleshy Porter with his finger in the stock market, for the ambitious Carson who would better have rested in his father's dugout in Iowa. They were a part of the travailing world, without which it could not fulfil its appointed destiny. It was childish to dislike them; with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental class division of society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious members of an inferior class to rise out of that class and join the ranks of a superior class, so long will the struggle which ensues as the natural outgrowth of ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Alcibiades, a relative of Pericles, but lacking his sobriety and disinterested spirit, plays an active part. Beautiful in person, rich, a graceful and effective orator, but restless and ambitious, he quickly acquired great influence. Three years after the peace of Nicias, he persuaded Athens to join a league of disaffected Peloponnesian allies of Sparta; but in the battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) the Spartans regained their supremacy. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... result of this condition of affairs, both mother and daughter were soon sought in marriage by many ardent and ambitious suitors, each presenting his claims for preferment and doing all in his power to bring about an alliance which meant so much for the future. Godfrey of Lorraine, who was not friendly to the party of the Emperor Henry III., while ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... how to explain it. Lily had begged him that afternoon to bring his little sister down. To tell the truth she was very ambitious to know the Underhills. They must be somebody, for they kept horses and a carriage, and ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... second," Wolden explained. "Our first was much smaller. We had been working on a smaller model long before Grim Hagen got ambitious. Some of our scientists have already gone into space. We are in touch with them. They went quietly and noiselessly. There was no need for all the destruction and havoc that Grim Hagen worked. But this model is larger even than the Old Ship, and all the ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... followed they were afraid.' Then the story goes on to tell how James and John, with their arrogant wish, did draw closer to Him, the rest of them lagging behind, conscious of a certain unaccustomed distance between Him and them, which only the ambitious two dared to diminish. Further, one of the Evangelists speaks of His face being 'set' to go to Jerusalem, the gentle lineaments fixed in a new expression of resolution and absorption. The Cross was flinging its shadow ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... favour with King Hacon, who peradventure would have kept him at his side if he could. This seems to have been the most important episode in his otherwise uneventful life. But the advantages and opportunities which were at the command of any ambitious and studious young monk at St. Alban's were in themselves extraordinary. We have said that building was always going on. It was going on on a very large scale indeed in Abbot William's time. That means that there ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Judge Ballard appointed J. Waldo Snyder to defend him. He was a new young lawyer from the East that had just come to Red Gap, highly ambitious and full of devices for showing that parties couldn't have been in their right mind when they committed the deed—see the State against Jamstucker, New York Reports Number 23, pages 19 ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a House, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. That Mrs Dombey had entered on that social contract of matrimony: almost necessarily part of a genteel and wealthy station, even without reference to the perpetuation of family Firms: with her eyes fully open to these advantages. That Mrs Dombey had had daily practical knowledge of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... they are clumsy after they reach five. Do you remember the yellow-haired child I trained about ten years ago? Ali, she was a wonder! But you never could keep her down. How I used to beat her! She would be black welts from her shoulders to her knees. No, you could not keep her down. She was so ambitious. If she had only kept out of politics, she might have been stealing yet. But now she is in Siberia, in the mines. Bah! A home life for me, I say! What care I who is in power, so long as pretty ladies carry shopping bags and wear sparkling bracelets and flashing brooches! I ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... Towers would take any little humble offering of his talents; calculating that Tom Towers himself must have once had a beginning, have once doubted as to his own success. Towers could not have been born a writer in The Jupiter. With such ideas, half ambitious and half awe-struck, had Bold regarded the silent-looking workshop of the gods; but he had never yet by word or sign attempted to influence the slightest word of his unerring friend. On such a course was he now intent; and not without much inward palpitation did he betake himself to the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... would produce specific results. If Sorensen's device didn't produce those results, or if they couldn't be duplicated by Thorn after having had the device explained to him, then the contract wasn't fulfilled, and the ambitious Mr. Sorensen wouldn't get ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... as Richelieu and Iago, and in all three of these parts, so diverse in their character I found him absolutely admirable. I cannot say so much for his Macbeth, which I saw one night when passing through Philadelphia. The part seemed to me not adapted to his nature. Macbeth was an ambitious man, and Booth was not. Macbeth had barbarous and ferocious instincts, and Booth was agreeable, urbane, and courteous. Macbeth destroyed his enemies traitorously—did this even to gain possession of their goods—while Booth ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... found governments, but to try what they can do and become, to justify themselves to themselves and to their fellows. We desire to please and help,—but still more, at first, to be sure that we can please and help. If he hears any man speak effectually in public, the ambitious boy will never rest till he can also speak, or do some other deed as difficult and as well worth doing. For the trial of faculty we must go out into the world of institutions, range ourselves beside the workers, take up their tools ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... question but yourself. Your next duty is just to determine what your next duty is. Is there nothing you neglect? Is there nothing you know you ought not to do? You would know your duty, if you thought in earnest about it, and were not ambitious of great things." "Ah, then," responded she, "I suppose it is something very commonplace, which will make life more dreary than ever. That cannot help me." "It will, if it be as dreary as reading the newspapers to an old ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... us in every direction; we are too small. We are forgetting-machines. Men are beings which think little; above all, they forget." In Napoleon's day every soldier had a marshal's baton in his knapsack, and every soldier had in his brain the ambitious image of the little Corsican officer. There are no longer any individuals now, there is a human mass which is itself lost amid elemental forces. "More than six thousand miles of French trenches, more than six thousand miles of such miseries ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... I had just mother to live for. But I was very ambitious. I meant to teach and earn my way through college. I meant to climb to the very top—oh, I won't talk of that either. It's no use. You know what happened. I couldn't see my dear little heart-broken mother, who had been such a slave all her life, turned out of her home. Of course, I could have ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Huish. 'I ain't wedded to this, if you think I am; I ain't ambitious; I don't make a point of playin' the lead; I offer to, that's all, and if you can't show me better, by ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... country village at home. Straggling huts on either side brought us to the principal street of Mahim, and here we found the houses lighted, and lamps suspended, in imitation of bunches of grapes, before all that were ambitious ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... lovely! exquisite! name your price;' and they buy it. Here the public look and look. 'Not bad,' they say, 'but the color is from Veronese, and that attitude is surely Raphael's. What a mine that man's genius has been to ambitious but less gifted artists!' and so they go on. I wish they would let the dead rest in peace. Are you acquainted with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... impoverishes day by day her industrial and fighting strength; hundreds of thousands of Germans overseas prevented from joining her armies; her wireless and coaling stations over all the world and her colonial empire, that ambitious and costly fabric of her dreams, cut off from the Fatherland and brought ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... contrary, It is written (1 Cor. 13:5) that "charity is not ambitious, seeketh not her own." Now nothing is contrary to charity, except sin. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas |
