Ambition Quotes

In Russia, the person who put Sevastopol on the literary map was Leo Tolstoy, a veteran of the siege. His fictionalized memoir The Sebastopol Sketches made him a national celebrity. Already with the first installment of the work published, Tsar Alexander II saw the propaganda value of the piece and ordered it translated into French for dissemination abroad. That made the young author very happy. Compared with Tolstoy’s later novels, The Sebastopol Sketches hasn’t aged well, possibly because this is not a heartfelt book. As the twenty-six-year-old Tolstoy’s Sevastopol diaries reveal, not heartache but ambition drove him at the time. Making a name as an author was just an alternative to two other grand plans—founding a new religion and creating a mathematical model for winning in cards (his losses during the siege were massive even for a rich person).

~ Constantine Pleshakov

Surely there must be in a world of manifold beautiful things something among them for me. And always, while I am still young, there is that dim light, the Future. But it is indeed a dim, dim light, and ofttimes there's a treachery in it.

~ Mary Maclane

I have an ambition to live 300 years. I will not live 300 years. Maybe I will live one year more. But I have the ambition. Why you will not have ambition? Why? Have the greatest ambition possible. You want to be immortal? Fight to be immortal. Do it. You want to make the most fantastic art or movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try.

~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

I want my writing to bring people not just to think of trees as they mostly do now, but of each individual tree, and each kind of tree.

~ Roger Deakin

When the right stage gets missing, true talent that can grow to inspire, nurture and change lives least gets the right stage to manifest; real deft and dexterity remains latent and people only die with their dreams, abilities and capabilities.

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I have heard many a young unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, “Ah me! I wish I were a widow!” Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather’s weight of encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition.

~ Henry James

I told myself that I was going to live the rest of my life as if it were Saturday.

~ Chip Gaines

...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin]

~ John Steinbeck

Richard, marked for misery and defeat, acknowledged that power which sentiment possesses to exalt us—to convince us that our minds, endowed with a soaring, restless aspiration, can find no repose on earth except in love.

~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

You know, you the worst kind, you want to marry the artist and live like squalor, but you wait, in five years you be like, Baby Jake why we eat ramen noodles every night? You a hustler, don't blind me, I see.

~ Stephanie Danler

My only career goal is to be an halloween icon.

~ Nuno Roque

Emperor, king, general, duke,” he whispered to himself. “These are just labels. Climb up the family tree of any of them high enough and you’ll find a commoner who dared to take a chance.

~ Ken Liu

Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness.

~ Manu Joseph

Ambition's ambition is immortality. To create an eternal legacy.

~ Renzo Dante (Saligiare)

A day in a man’s life is constructed according to whether he accepts or rejects flashes of inspiration.

~ Eiji Yoshikawa

You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. 'A reality shaped around your own desires' — there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

~ Zadie Smith

Cecil: “A cup of love is greater than a pitcher full of ambition.

~ William Carmichael

Talents too many, not enough of any.

~ Naomi Wood

You don’t come to live here [New York City] unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. 'A reality shaped around your own desires' — there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

~ Zadie Smith

No ambition which feeds on blood can be a worthy one

~ Nilesh Rathod

Ambition had never troubled me, so I decided to begin by watching life at my leisure for a few years, waiting until I finally felt tempted to find some circle of influence for myself.

~ Stefan Zweig

A place in the sun, that's what I am aiming for... and who could ever ask for more?' -Columbine to Pierrot

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

You are always a bishop with a ambition and second as a fisher.

~ Deyth Banger

In fact, ambitious tension actually limits our ability to succeed because it keeps us in a state of contraction emotionally and physically. It seems to give us energy but doesn't really.  Like the white sugar of mental health, there's a short high followed by a crash.  The cultivation of mental rest or surrender is like eating healthy food.  It doesn’t give us an immediate rush, but over time it provides a lot more energy.

~ Marianne Williamson

If I keep pushing myself, I’ll finally be somebody. I’ll finally matter. I’ll finally arrive.” Nonsense. You won’t be satisfied. The only thing worse than failing to realize any of your dreams, is seeing them all come true. You were meant for something more. Even if you could be known the world over, what does it matter if you have no time to be known by God?

~ Kevin Deyoung

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

If you can't get everyone on your side, make sure they're right behind you.

~ Benny Bellamacina

Nippers was a whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition and indigestion.

~ Herman Melville

Have you ever had an experience where, had things turned out just a little bit differently, your entire life would have been transformed?Like a Supreme Court clerkship, a Rhodes Scholarship gets mentioned in your obituary.The door was open just a crack, in a way that seemed to say “I have an ‘open door’ policy, but I really don’t want to be bothered.”Success didn’t take you off the treadmill, but simply put you on a different treadmill, at a higher speed and with a steeper incline.When we’re young, overachieving, and unstoppable, we all think we’re special. But as we grow older, we reach a more realistic understanding of our place in the world. It happens at different times for different people, but eventually we all come to terms with our own ordinariness.

~ David Lat

Your ambition is the most reliable alarm clock.

~ Faisal Khosa

There is nothing in the world so enticing as that which you have been told you may not have.

~ Marie Brennan

Soldiers in foreign camps, so far from being missionaries for good, require missionaries themselves, more than the natives. Andrew Carnegie

~ H.w. Brands

The world’s deadliest mercenaries choose to serve you, the whispers say, because they have yet to meet me.

~ Marie Lu

In Washington, the venerable were often vulnerable.

~ John Taliaferro

Ambition is the intellectual equivalent of body odour.

~ Jerry Toner

One of my objectives is learning more than is absolutely necessary.

~ Jules Verne

Ambition is a noble passion which may legitimately take many forms, there was something noble in the ambitions of Attila or Napoleon, but the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent value.

~ G.h. Hardy

Success comes only through strong will, determination and effort.

~ Santonu Kumar Dhar

Self-reliance and self-learning are your greatest assets.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Self-confidence is your greatest virtue.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita