"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... neither mee, your selues, nor any thing: you are ambitious, for poore knaues cappes and legges: you weare out a good wholesome Forenoone, in hearing a cause betweene an Orendge wife, and a Forfetseller, and then reiourne the Controuersie of three-pence to a second day of Audience. When you are hearing a matter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of some aeons should distil. There was need of savagery to say what she proposed to say. The voice of training, of civilization, of unselfishness, of friendship raised a protest. Wait then for a moment. Wait until the bitterness of an ambitious and unrounded life could formulate this evil impulse. Wait, till Mary Connynge could summon treachery enough to slay her friend. And yet, wait only until the primitive soul of Mary Connynge should become altogether ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... slipping the fruit into his pocket also, retired from the presence of the pretty queen, and meeting Lakha, one of the maids of honour, explained to her its wonderful power, and gave it to her as a token of his love. But the maid of honour, being an ambitious girl, determined that the fruit was a fit present to set before the Regent in the absence of the King. Bhartari Raja accepted it, bestowed on her great wealth, and ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... bar-room. It was a small room, with a stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit of the "spitters," a bar across one end—a mere counter with a sliding glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels, and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the man of business or affairs. His public activity was confined to the forepart of the house; his repose, his domestic joys, and his private pleasures were indulged in the buildings which lay behind the Atrium and its wings. As each of the departments of life became more ambitious, the sphere for the exercise of the one became more magnificent, and that which fostered the other the scene of a more perfect, because more quiet, luxury. The Atrium was soon to become a palatial hall adorned with marble colonnades;[33] the small yard with ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... characteristic of Lady Jane's mind. As a girl, she had been ambitious lor herself, and that ambition had been disappointed; as a woman, her ambition transferred itself to her son. She was the eldest daughter of the Earl of Lodway, a nobleman who had been considerably overweighted ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... me, that if I had gone into Edinburgh to push my fortune, I could have cut half the trade out of bread, and maybe risen, in the course of nature, to be Lord Provost himself; but I just heard them speak, and kept my wheisht. I never was overly ambitious; and I remembered how proud Nebuchadnaazer ended with eating grass on all-fours. Every man has a right to be the best judge of his own private matters; though, to be sure, the advice of a true friend is often more precious than rubies, and ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... consulted a troop of fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live to be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of a mother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitious woman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... at the head of the splendid army bequeathed to him by his father, he invaded Silesia (see AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION, WAR OF). The Prussian victory at Mollwitz (April 10, 1741) brought into the field against Austria all the powers which were ambitious of expansion at her expense: France, Bavaria, Spain, Saxony and Sardinia. Nor was the peril wholly external. Apart from the perennial discontents of Magyars and Slavs, the confusion and corruption of the administration, and the misery caused by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... your mind the thought that liberty is license. Liberty, in its full, true meaning, is the pure action of a true manhood, in obedience to the laws of the individual. For a simple illustration, look at our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Danforth. She, as you well know, is an ambitious woman; smart, and rather above the majority of her neighbors, intellectually, but not spiritually. Her husband is a kind-hearted man, content to fill an ordinary station in life, but spiritually far her superior. His nature is rich in ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... have reached the lowest rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... light and vigorous, and of fiery spirits; but the Goths, inured to danger on this frontier, retained the stubborn valor of their race, so impaired among their brethren in Spain. They were commanded, too, by one skilled in warfare and ambitious of renown. After a vehement conflict, the Moslem assailants were repulsed from all points, and driven from the walls. Don Julian sallied forth, and harassed them in their retreat; and so severe was the carnage, that the veteran Musa was fain ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... look as pretty as Barney—B. Phelps Black, wouldn't you? And I—Oh, HOW I should love it! Trumet is so out of date. A real intelligent, ambitious woman has ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was abrogated. The wife of Winfield Mason was the daughter of Dr. James Greenway, a near neighbor. He was born in England, near the borders of Scotland, and inherited his father's trade, that of a weaver. He was ambitious and studious, and giving all of his spare time to study, he became familiar with the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian languages. After his immigration to Virginia he prepared himself for the practice of medicine, and soon acquired a large and lucrative ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... third edition in 1808, handing the author thirty pounds for the copyright. Actively employed in his trade, Struthers continued to devote his leisure hours to composition. In 1816 he published a pamphlet "On the State of the Labouring Poor." A more ambitious literary effort was carried out in 1819; he edited a collection of the national songs, which was published at Glasgow, under the title of "The Harp of Caledonia," in three vols. 18mo. To this work Joanna ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... philosophy, discredited by a long series of failures. I am not indifferent to this warning; yet I cannot but think that I have chosen the form best suited to my purpose. For, in the first place, the problems I have undertaken to discuss have an interest not only philosophic but practical; and I was ambitious to treat them in a way which might perhaps appeal to some readers who are not professed students of philosophy. And, secondly, my subject is one which belongs to the sphere of right opinion and perception, rather than to that of logic and demonstration; and seems ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... far above the average of his class. He was sensible of a certain superiority, yet it was not from the contemplation of this that he drew his elation. He saw the issue quite clearly and knew the pathway which must be trodden. He was not personally ambitious for the sake of making an impression or gaining power. He knew that in too many cases men had in the past made their position a sinecure in the Labor Movement and he condemned their action. The Movement must be served and not lived on. Not personal betterment, but the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... provincial churl, Who blushes quite unseen? Perchance to some ambitious Earl Or Stockbroker, I ween? Such things have frequently occurred, And gems like thee have crowned The titular and moneyed herd, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... houses and the ponte alle Carraia in a small tabernacle on one side, Our Lady seated sewing, to whom a clothed child who is seated, is offering a bird, done with such care that although it is small it merits no less praise than the more ambitious efforts of the master. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... said another gentleman. 'I have known him from childhood. He is not a bad man, and, as you know, he is a man of ability, one of the very few able men to be found acting with President Carnot. But he is very vain, very ambitious, very excitable. As the associate of Petit, who is a rampant atheist, and of the anti-clericals generally, he has to pose as an unbeliever; but he is, in fact, nothing of the sort. His wife is a good woman, and he goes in great awe of her, which I think to his credit. I ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... as were not really, essential to aristocracy. She might, indeed, err too much the other way from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said: "If people had no pasts, they would have no futures." And Lady Casterley could not bear people without futures. She was ambitious; not with the low ambition of one who had risen from nothing, but with the high passion of one on the top, who meant to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was a movement per saltum, beyond all that history has recorded. At cock-crow they had no power at all; when the sun went down, they had gained (if they could have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not less memorably strange is, that even yet the ambitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... jardin"—especially if the term garden may be taken broadly and applied to the stony and weed-grown ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the average British ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... shoulders: "two or three years in penal servitude, I expect. Anyhow, Broken Feather's ambitious career doesn't look as if it would materialize. He'll be put out of the way of doin' further mischief, and we can settle down in our peaceful ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... this incalculable advantage, that one can change one's family from time to time, take up one's abode in all kinds of society in turn: in summer, in the country with the workman who rents you a room in his house; in winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if one is ambitious. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... command, are there 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 ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... that of "cradling" surpassed in severity "binding on a station." It was a full-grown man's job, but every boy was ambitious to try his hand, and when at fourteen years of age I was promoted from "bundle boy" to be one of the five hands to bind after the reaper, I went to my corner with joy and confidence. For two years I had been serving as binder on the corners, (to keep the grain out ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of flesh on his bones, and looked far more like a giant. We concluded to equip ourselves in male attire, for the sake of variety—being heartily tired of frocks and petticoats; and Ellen's pretty curls having been tucked up under a round cap, she looked so fascinating that I felt quite ambitious to rival her—but in attempting to draw on one of Charles' jackets, I found that it would not meet round my waist. Oh, mortification unspeakable! to find myself larger around the waist than a boy a whole year my senior! I could scarcely refrain from bursting ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... the provinces, and the nations that submitted to the Roman arms, had their patrons in the capital, whom they courted with assiduity. It was this mark of distinction that raised the ambitious citizen to the first honours in the state. To have a number of clients, as well at home as in the most important colonies, was the unremitting desire, the study, and constant labour of all who aimed at pre-eminence; insomuch that, in the time of the old republic, the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... can and dog, A waste of snow, ice, and moss. The graveyard of ambitions, The by-word for hell, The home of the famed double cross. Men come here for gold, Ambitious for wealth They stick—for they can't get away, They dig, drink, and die, And then go to hell, To pay ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber's persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal. And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow. There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... react on each other to an endless degree. These men are untamable, and no one can ever succeed with them unless he is with them in all-in-all, and is a leader recognized. But if you can win them they are loyal to death. If you are ambitious—and I know you are—there may be a field for you in such a country. With your qualifications, fortified by the fortune which I am happy enough to be able to leave you, you may dare much and go far. Should I be alive when you return from your exploration in ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... and many similar occurrences Miss Anthony saw nothing but a warm and sincere friendship. To Mr. Tilton Mr. Beecher was as a father or an elder brother. He had placed the ambitious and talented youth where he could achieve both fame and fortune, had introduced him into the highest social circles and shown to the world that he regarded him as his dearest confidential friend, and for years the two men had enjoyed the closest and strongest intimacy. Mrs. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... No ambitious foe dares now invade our country. No standing army now endangers our liberty.—Our commerce, though subject in some degree to the depredations of the belligerent powers, is extended from pole to pole; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... in the conduct of Lady Inger portrays the ambitious but the inexperienced dramatist. No doubt a pious commentator can successfully unravel all the threads of the plot, but the spectator demands that a play should be clearly and easily intelligible. The audience, however, is sorely puzzled by the events of this ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... wish to leave a sum of money in trust, to be paid to one Gretchen Schwarz, who lives in the Krumerweg. She is ambitious to become a singer. Let nothing stand between ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... that a very good case can be made out in favour of some other objects of natural affection. For example, a fair apology has been offered by those ambitious persons who have fallen in love with the sea. But, after all, that is a formless and disquieting passion. It lacks solid comfort and mutual confidence. The sea is too big for loving, and too uncertain. It ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... chieftains. The rigour of the feudal system, which was carried to its utmost extent in the Highlands, although softened by the patriarchal character of the chiefs, was revolting to the chieftains or landholders under the yoke of some feudal nobleman or chief; and they became ambitious of becoming direct holders from the Crown. It was a scheme of James the Second to abolish this system of infeudation, by buying up the superiorities,—a plan, the completion of which was attempted by William the Third, but defeated by the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... intensity of the action, the strong conception of character, and the full, solemn music of the verse, make it unquestionably the masterpiece of Arnold's longer poems, among which it is the largest in bulk and also the most ambitious in scheme." Balder Dead, a characteristic Arnoldian production, founded upon the Norse legend of Balder, Lok, and Hader, though not so great as Sohrab and Rustum, has much poetic worth and ranks high among its kind; and Tristram and Iseult, with its infinite tragedy, and The Sick King in ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to test our sincerity even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself. We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and calumny. Tumults may arise against us. The proud and pharisaical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and powers, may combine to crush us. So they treated the Messiah whose example we are humbly striving to imitate. We shall not be afraid of their terror. Our confidence is in the Lord ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... had already attended the seminary at Rockford, of which my father was trustee, without any question I entered there at seventeen, with such meager preparation in Latin and algebra as the village school had afforded. I was very ambitious to go to Smith College, although I well knew that my father's theory in regard to the education of his daughters implied a school as near at home as possible, to be followed by travel abroad in lieu of the wider advantages which the eastern ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... tall were called the "Long Nine." At Vandalia Lincoln was the leader of the Long Nine and labored to advance legislation for public improvements to be financed by the sale of public lands. He confided to a friend that he was dreaming of the Governorship and was ambitious to become the ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... "Ambitious for her husband," replied my mother, "as a sensible woman should be. She appreciates that a woman's best chance for big dividends in marriage is by being the silent partner in her husband's career. She'll be very domestic when she ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... restaurant at Monte Carlo, the Queen's in Piccadilly, London, and the Cafe Royal in Brussels. Of all his ventures, however, this recently opened Ansonia (hotel and restaurant) was by far the most ambitious. The building occupied a full block on the Champs Elysees, just above the Rond Point, so that it was in the center of fashionable Paris. It was the exact copy of a well-known Venetian palace, and its exquisite white marble colonnade made it a real adornment to the gay ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... decreed To call some hero to partake the deed, Forthwith AEneas rises to his thought: For him in Troy's remotest lines he sought, Where he, incensed at partial Priam, stands, And sees superior posts in meaner hands. To him, ambitious of so great an aid, The bold Deiphobus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... "And I'm ambitious for you!" she cried. "Go ahead and get power. Take the earth! Don't stop till you reach the sea—that's the spirit of the West. But how did you ever think of ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... But such proceedings would have been subject to all the uncertain contingencies and delays involved in partisan struggles and popular elections, and to all the imperfections of halfway measures and expedients of compromise, born amid angry contentions, and bartered for by ambitious aspirants to place and power. By no other means could a complete and adequate arrangement of the difficulty be brought about so effectually as by the terrible lessons of this lamentable civil war. Nothing else would have been so well calculated to clear the eyes of the people of all illusions, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ambitious young eel Who determined to ride on a wheel; But try as he might, He couldn't ride right, In spite of his ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... wider. The king, Henry VIII., who at this time was at his best, had always kept an eye on him, and soon bade Wolsey seek him out. Now More and Wolsey were so different in their ways and in their views that they could never have become real friends, for while Wolsey was ambitious, More was always content with what he had, and never desired to thrust himself into notice. At first he resisted the cardinal's advances; but rudeness was impossible to him, and as there was no means of checking ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... principle and convictions regardless of consequences personal to themselves. Occasionally there are found some who are even willing to be martyrs, but they are exceptions to the general rule. The average man is politically ambitious. He desires political distinction and official recognition. In determining his party affiliations, therefore, he is more than apt to cast his lot with the party through which he believes that ambition ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... was believed that any revolution in Mexico founded upon opposition to the ambitious projects of Paredes would tend to promote the cause of peace as well as prevent any attempted European interference in the affairs of the North American continent, both objects of deep interest to the United States. Any such foreign interference, if attempted, must have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... any ambitious literary effort in this period, we must turn northward again. In the middle colonies, and especially in Philadelphia, which had now outgrown Boston in population, there was a quickened interest in education and science. But the New Englanders were still the chief makers of books. Three great names ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... an old tattered Latin grammar; I felt myself quite a learned man—actually the possessor of a Latin book! I regarded as something almost miraculous the opening of this new field for my ambition. Not that I was consciously, much less selfishly, ambitious. I had no idea as yet to be anything but a tailor to the end; to make clothes—perhaps in a less infernal atmosphere—but still to make clothes and live thereby. I did not suspect that I possessed powers above ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Father Buonaventure was so slow, that Fairford had time to notice all this, and to marvel in his mind what wily and ambitious priest could have contrived to subject his worthy but simple-minded hostesses to such superstitious trammels. Father Buonaventure's entrance and appearance in some degree ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... who bought him is neither young nor beautiful." Several times he determined to learn a trade, so that he might be in a position to refund the debt and break the bargain. But he never did. He was both ambitious and idle. He wanted to fly at once; he had a horror of beginnings of apprenticeships. His early education had been so neglected that in order to recover lost time he would have been compelled to study hard—all the ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... politicians who secretly desired to convert the Republic into an Empire, that they might secure greater power and opulence. They had seen in the deluded enthusiasm of the people for one man, the opportunity for which they had long waited and schemed. He was unscrupulous and ambitious, and power had become a necessity to feed the cravings ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... times when they saw things topplin' down all round 'em. They sent your Napoleon to St. Helena an' a lot of others didn't do much better in the long run. Julius Caesar was pretty great an' pretty ambitious. He fell. There's a heap to be said fer livin' straight an' simple. We're self-respectin' men an' women with clean blood in our veins that don't have to bow down to no man. We've lived honest an' worked hard, but sometimes ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color; with a Selection of Pieces of Poetry. (New York, 1826.) Some of these sketches show how ambitious Negroes succeeded in ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... of industries that were called into being by the spread of Buddhism.[15] It was not enough that village temples and town monasteries should be built, under an impulse that meant volumes for the development of the country. The ambitious leaders chose sightly spots on mountains whence were lovely vistas of scenery, on which to erect temples and monasteries, while it seemed to be their further ambition to allow no mountain peak to be inaccessible. With armies of workmen, supported by the contributions of the faithful ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... those camp-fires and the juice of the vine was poured into them out of jugs of precious metal. Tongues were wagging fast, for, though there was indeed but one opinion as to what had been done, there were mercenaries enough and ambitious pretenders who could dare to defend it. Every word might reach the sovereign's ears, and the day might bring promotion as well as gold and booty. Even the calmest were still in some excitement over the massacre they had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... interest in public affairs and a resolve to have weight in them was becoming felt in the nation at large. It was by the sure instinct of a great people that this interest and resolve gathered themselves round William Pitt. If he was ambitious, his ambition had no petty aim. "I want to call England," he said, as he took office, "out of that enervate state in which twenty thousand men from France can shake her." His call was soon answered. He at once breathed his own lofty spirit ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Helen very well. She is very ambitious, and she has great respect for wealth. She thinks money can do most anything in this old world. There's no telling what Helen will do when it comes to marrying. I can't imagine her ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... one, more ambitious than his fellows, undertakes an original work, whose opinion can he obtain as to its merits or demerits? The men of the reigning class know nothing about it, and the princes very little. The owner of the finest gallery in Rome said last year, in the salon of an Ambassador, "I ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... parasites of the law—the Guppys and Chucksters; and altogether to have stored his mind, as he had done at school, with a series of invaluable notes and observations. All very well, no doubt, as we look at the matter now. But then it must often have seemed to the ambitious, energetic lad, that he was wasting his time. Was he to remain for ever a lawyer's clerk who has not the means to be an articled clerk, and who can never, therefore, aspire to become a full-blown solicitor? Was he to spend the future obscurely in the dingy purlieus of the law? His father, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... boy au fond, they made him a poltroon and worse by their persecutions, their meanness, their petty tyranny. He is proud, and they sent him to reside on a village manure heap; he is ambitious, and must drill raw recruits from morn till night; he is eager to learn and they try to embalm his intellect with tracts and kill his initiative by the endless, ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... think it as much a part of their religion to fill the family horse-shed as the family pew; and in good weather would send a mile to pasture for the horses to drive a half mile to meeting. But, meeting out, the parson's prayer and sermon said, the choir's ambitious anthem lustily sung, the politics of the prayer, and the politics of the sermon, both summarily criticised, approved, condemned, partly with looks and winks, and partly with loud words in the porch, there is now a little space ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... son, while his brothers Charibert reigned at Paris, and Sigebert in Austrasia, residing at Metz, he was crowned king of Orleans and Burgundy in 561, making Challons on the Saone his capital. When compelled to take up arms against his ambitious brothers and the Lombards, he made no other use of his victories under the conduct of a brave general called Mommol, than to give peace to his dominions. He protected his nephews against the practices of the wicked dowager queens, Brunehault of Sigebert, and Fredegonde ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... I had resolved to set up "a character;" for I was always of an ambitious nature, and desirous of being distinguished from the ordinary herd. After various cogitations as to the particular one I should assume, I thought nothing appeared more likely to be remarkable among men, and therefore pleasing to women, than ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he felt a strong curiosity to see it. Besides, was not that the city where the "Weekly Standard" was printed, the paper in which he had already appeared as an author? In connection with this, I must here divulge a secret of Harry's. He was ambitious not only to contribute to the literary papers, but to be paid for his contributions. He judged that essays were not very marketable, and he had therefore in his leisure moments written a humorous sketch, entitled "The Tin Pedler's Daughter." I shall not give any idea of the plot here; I ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... What the popular or vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came about that so able and ambitious a man made so poor a thing out of life, and failed so completely, is puzzling at first, though a little study would, I think, make the reasons of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... returned to find a dozen geese that had been stripped of all the feathers. They had been told to pick only the pin feathers beneath the wings and about the bodies of the geese. Need we guess what happened to the over ambitious children? ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... under the very shadow of Burghley Castle, he should have known that by trimming his poetic course in the right direction, he might have landed at almost any haven of comfort—might have become under-gardener in the park, or, if less ambitious, been sent to the House of Commons as member for Stamford. But there was a deplorable want of worldly wisdom in John Clare. That he was a real poet the noble marquis was ready to believe, not distrusting the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... of England was a little boy in Scotland, he had an extremely clever tutor, George Buchanan. Now Buchanan was a great Latin scholar. He wrote verses, and was called the Scotch Virgil. Of course he was very ambitious that his royal pupil should be a good Latin scholar too, and the books say he "whipped so much knowledge into him" that James was called the "British Solomon." This was the approved way in Great Britain at that time to educate ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... him to the manufactory in which Albert Benbow was a partner, but he preferred not to display to the father of Clara's offspring his avuncular patronage of George Cannon, and he chose the works of a customer down at Shawport for whom he was printing a somewhat ambitious catalogue. He would call at the works and talk about the catalogue, and then incidentally mention that his young ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... on 'em would be left lamentin', anyhow," and she gave a girlish laugh. An air of victory animated the frame of Mrs. Tobin. She felt but twenty-five years of age. In that moment she made plans for cutting her Briley's hair, and making him look smartened-up and ambitious. Then she wished that she knew for certain how much money he had in the bank; not that it would make any difference now. "He needn't bluster none before me," she thought gayly. "He's ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... writing, there is none in which authors are more apt to miscarry than in works of humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel. It is not an imagination that teems with monsters, a head that is filled with extravagant conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the world with diversions of this nature; and yet, if we look into the productions of several writers, who set up for men of humour, what wild, irregular ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... succession of surprises to her. When she opened the door to retrospection, which was not often, she remembered that the man who had stumbled upon the rich quartz vein in Yellow Dog Gulch could scarcely sign his name legibly to the papers recording his claim; that in those days there was no prophecy of the ambitious present in the man, half drunkard and half outlaw, whose name in the Yellow Dog district had been a synonym for—but these were unpleasant memories, and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... not find this a difficult way of relieving your pattern, if you only are not too ambitious of getting the diverse superimposed colours too forcible on the one hand, so that they fly out from one another, or on the other hand too delicate, so that they run together into confusion. The excellence of this ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... household, and may, every day, Head, in their virtuous parents' noble parts, The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts. Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee With other edifices, when they see Those proud ambitious heaps, and nothing else, May say their lords have built, but ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the acts which changed the Charter of the institution, abolished the old corporation of Trustees, created a new one, extinguished the legal identity of the college, and reconstructed it or set up another under a different and more ambitious name and a different government. The old Trustees, with President Brown at their head, denied the validity of these acts, and resisted their administration. A dominant political party had passed or ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... most fitting, that, to solicit this matter properly, your lordship should go to Court in a manner beseeming your quality. I am a goldsmith, and live by lending money as well as by selling plate. I am ambitious to put an hundred pounds to be at interest in your hands, till ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... cite a hundred illustrations, were they needed, to prove what I say to be true. There was undoubtedly great corruption and mal-administration in the country in the time of President Grant. Selfish men and ambitious men got the ear of that simple and confiding President. They studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the foot of his customer. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Schurz and Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Greeley and the New York Tribune, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Mexican war, he was exceedingly profuse with his means in aiding their necessities and supplying their wants. He was universally commented upon as the most munificent officer of the army. He was ambitious and courageous; and this ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Shakspeare's "Love's Labor Lost," "That that Poet was familiarly acquainted with this Comedy is evident from the passage, 'Holofernes says, Novi hominem tanquam te. His humor is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and Thrasonical.'" We may remark that the previous words of Gnatho, though spoken with reference to the King, contain a reproach against the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... he wishes, may discover without undue delay, the little volume of modern prose selections that he has before him is the result of no ambitious or pretentious design. It is not a collection of the best things that have lately been known and thought in the American world; it is not an anthology in which "all our best authors" are represented by striking ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... his darling and his pride. He was ambitious for him. He earnestly desired to solve for him a problem which is as impossible as squaring the circle, viz., how to transmit our experience to our children. The years and the health he had wasted before he knew Bella Bruce, these he resolved his successor should not waste. He looked higher ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here! Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of indignation, Mrs. Hanway-Harley burst in upon Senator Hanway. That ambitious gentleman was employed in abstruse calculations as to tariff schedules, and how far they might be expected to bear upon his chances in the coming National Convention. Senator Hanway was somewhat impressed by Mrs. Hanway-Harley's visit; his study had never been that lady's ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... new system enables the elector of the country to be more reasonably represented in the House, still there are some ambitious politicians urging for their own selfish purpose to restore the old system. But, as almost all prominent members in both Houses are fully cognizant of the relative merits and demerits of the two systems, ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... I get discouraged when I read of one man being worth a thousand million dollars. It makes me feel mighty poor. I don't see any use in being ambitious and taking any stock at all in anything so far as I am concerned, but I do hate to see the government come to harm. I get to thinking that if the Declaration of Independence isn't going to hold out that I'll change my politics and then see what will happen. When a fellow who is as set in his ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... prove to the modern reader, the debt of gratitude he owes to the inaugurator of a completely original system of fiction. Speaking of Balzac's impecunious and ambitious heroes, Gautier cries:[*] "O Corinne, who on the Cape of Messina allowest thy snowy arm to hang over the ivory lyre, while the son of Albion, clothed in a superb new cloak, and with elegant boots perfectly polished, gazes at thee, and listens in an elegant ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... would have asked the portrait if the face from which it was taken had grown more proud and cold as the years went by, or more sad and gentle—for, surely, in this work-a-day world of ours, fate would not be likely to have gifts in store that would wholly satisfy those eager, ambitious eyes; but, being a man no wiser than many other men, he looked at the rather faded phonograph with considerable pleasure, and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... one himself should plume, And on his neighbour's worth presume; But still let Nature's garb prevail— Esop has left this little tale: A Daw, ambitious and absurd, Pick'd up the quills of Juno's bird; And, with the gorgeous spoil adorn'd, All his own sable brethren scorn'd, And join'd the peacocks—who in scoff Stripp'd the bold thief, and drove him off. The Daw, thus roughly handled, went To his own kind in discontent: But they in turn ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... violence as a stepping-stone to power, and then despotic violence as a necessity entailed upon him by its possession. They were naturally placed, or they placed themselves, in the regular ways and under the permanent conditions of government. William was an ambitious prince. It is puerile to believe that, up to the moment of the appeal sent to him from London in 1688, he had been insensible to the desire of ascending the throne of England, or ignorant of the schemes long going on to raise him to it. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Frenchman that you are, to look into the mysteries of the time. Ask yourself, marvel, how it comes to pass that we, the intellectuals among the Germans, take part without exception in this dreadful war; take part with body and soul. None of us ambitious, none of us a politician, not one of us who, till this war, busied himself about anything except his idea, the Palladium of his life! And now we are all afire, with all our hearts, with our whole people, all full of determination and prepared for the last. All our youth ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... doth but make his sport of vs, who striue one with another for such things, as most vnhappie is he, that hath best hap to finde them. Well now, you will say, the Couetouse in all his goodes, hath no good: the Ambitious at the best he can be, is but ill. But may there not be some, who supplying the place of Iustice, or being neere about a Prince, may without following such vnbrideled passions, pleasantly enioy their goodes, ioyning honor with rest and ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... natural indolence of the Tropics, he had always been conscious of a languor to fight. But the moment the sharp air of the North had tingled his skin his very muscles seemed to harden, his blood to quicken, and even his brain to become more alert and eager. If he had been ambitious and studious in an average temperature of eighty-five degrees, what would happen when the thermometer dropped below zero? He smiled, but with much contentment. The vaster the capacity for study, the better; as for his ambitions, they could rest until he had ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... had been attracted by him as a curiosity—"a balloon man who had twice fallen from the skies and yet was still alive"—had divined the mental power veiled habitually by his blank, opaque, wooden looks, had listened to his ambitious talk and gathered up the utterances of his thoughtful, long-pondering mind, had quarrelled with him finally and lastingly over rivalry in the good graces of a woman. {21} He saw in him a fourfold student; of the art of war, of the mind ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... what my feelings must be to hear 'em cry in vain—think what I must suffer to know that I summoned them cherubs out of Heaven into this here hard, hard world, lady, and now can't do by 'em properly!" And Cock-eye Flinks brushed away a tear which I, for one, am inclined to regard as a particularly ambitious ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Zoraida's. She required men, men of his stamp. And she seemed to have the way of drawing them to her. He felt utterly baffled; he could at the moment think of no argument which Bruce's infatuation would not thrust aside. Where he would depict a heartless, ambitious adventuress Bruce would see a glorified and ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... hitherto maintained, and maintained against all the influences of the time, against the pressure of circumstances which have swept many from our side and carried them into the large and swollen camp of the majority. Sir, I for one am ambitious of being known as one among that number of men who have kept their faith, who have followed their convictions, who have obeyed the dictation of duty in the worst of times, who did not bend when the storm beat hardest and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... glimmering stall; There let her stand and feed!— I am overweening, ambitious, small, A creature of pride and greed! Let me wash the hoofs, let me be the thrall, Jesus, of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... owned it persuade me that he was in earnest if he said he loved me? How could I persuade him that I was worth caring for and not a mere ambitious fool? There would be too ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... customes, decimations, not to mention the plate, even to very thimbles and the bodkins (for even to these did your avarice descend) and other booties, speak. All this dissipated and squandred away, to gratifie a few covetous and ambitious wretches, whose appetites are as deep as hell, and as insatiable as the grave; as if (as the Wise-man speaks) our time here were but a ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... a little difference between the two; very different from the French tribune, whose heart was so full of hatred and ambitious vindictiveness, was the honest President, who carried in his bosom a heart as innocent as the flowers which he held ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... and in every state of their art, have been ambitious of bestowing on their floating habitations, a style of decoration which, while appropriate to their element, should be thought somewhat analogous to the architectural ornaments of the land. Piety, superstition, and national usages, affect these characteristic ornaments, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... summarily dismissed the chauffeur and engaged in his place young Glenn Mitchell, accidentally brought to his notice. Mr. Champneys congratulated himself upon the discovery of Glenn Mitchell. To begin with, he was a South Carolinian, one of those well-born, penniless, ambitious young Southerners who come to New York to make their fortune. One of his forebears had married a Champneys. That was in ante bellum days, but South Carolina has a long memory, and this far-off tie immediately established the young fellow upon a footing of family relationship ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of mental resources and dependent upon others for their amusement, disillusioned men, lazy men, socially ambitious men, men gluttonously or alcoholically predisposed haunted these clubs. To one of them repaired those who were inclined to racquettes, squash, tennis, and the swimming tank. It was a sort of social clearing ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... of 1915 the Commander-in-Chief and his staff were busy with preparations for a battle, in conjunction with the French, which had ambitious objects. These have never been stated because they were not gained (and it was the habit of our High Command to conceal its objectives and minimize their importance if their hopes were unfulfilled), but beyond doubt the purpose of the battle was to gain possession of Lens and its ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... frosty air and sunlight, the long flies of the army were already winding forward up the road; already the Duke of Gloucester's banner was unfolded and began to move from before the abbey in a clump of spears; and behind it, girt by steel-clad knights, the bold, black-hearted, and ambitious hunchback moved on towards his brief kingdom and his lasting infamy. But the wedding party turned upon the other side, and sat down, with sober merriment, to breakfast. The father cellarer attended on their wants, and sat with them at table. Hamley, all jealousy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... concession was obtained by Holland from England in 1668 and 1674, as the price of an alliance between the two countries against the ambitious designs of Louis XIV. ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... encounter none the "history" of which embodies a greater number of curious truths—or of truths at least by which I find contemplation more enlivened. The thing done and dismissed has ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of looking dead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on an anxious review, the flush of life reappears. It is verily on recognising that flush on a whole side of "The Awkward Age" that I brand it all, but ever so tenderly, as monstrous—which is but ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... on that continent, the British subjects could never enjoy perfect repose, but must be in danger of being again plunged into those calamities from which they had been with so much difficulty delivered. Therefore it was determined to remove this ambitious and enterprising enemy entirely from the neighbourhood of these colonies, and secure them beyond a possibility of future molestation. Accordingly, by the fourth article of the treaty, "His most Christian ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... the latter there is observable a decorous and courtly checking of his anger in subservience to a predetermined plan, especially in his calm speech after receiving sentence of banishment compared with Mowbray's unaffected lamentation. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet to come; in the other it is desolation and a looking ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... colonies than in old societies, because for generations in the former the hand is relatively more important to progress than the head, and the man of work than the man of thought. In colonies men of great natural parts, if ambitious, can usually take good positions even if but little educated. At Home this is hardly possible, and the consequent social distemper is there a danger to the State—a danger, however, which our Education Acts since 1870 ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... see how things were going. I can remember, to this day, exactly how he looked as he took out his field-glass, watched the battle for a minute, and finally said: "It's all right! Everything is going well." Then, just as he was coming back, an ambitious chap in a plumed hat, who was always following him around, and who bothered him, they said, even at his meals, thought he'd play smart by going up on the very same hill; but he had hardly taken the Emperor's place when—batz!—away he went, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... was an episcopal city, the capital of the County Venaissin, governed by wealthy, powerful, and ambitious Bishops, who took no small interest in worldly aggrandisement. Passing by gift to the Papacy, after the sudden death of Clement V it was selected as the place of the Conclave which was to elect his successor. The members were assembled in the great episcopal Palace, when Bertrand de Goth, a nephew ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... may be reached without tempting Providence by any of these ambitious tricks. Our own stature will be found high enough for shame. The success of three simple sentences lures us into a fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from whose shut brackets we may never disentangle the thread of our discourse. A momentary flush tempts us into a quotation; and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should stand at proper distances from the sides and roof, or not to constantly shadow them through the whole summer, but allow, instead, the caressing sunshine to have full, free play over them. Again, we have often entered dwellings where it seemed to be the study of the good, ambitious housewife to shut out all the light, and shut in—of course, unconsciously—all the death which comes of dampness and dark, only so that her carpets are kept bright and shining for ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... for certain is that civilization is well advanced. Both in the north and the south there are many organized and independent city states, and not unfrequently these wage war one against another. Occasionally ambitious rulers tower among their fellows, conduct vigorous military campaigns, and become overlords of wide districts. As a rule, a subjugated monarch who has perforce to acknowledge the suzerainty of a powerful king is allowed to remain in a state of semi-independence on condition that he pays a heavy ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... 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 any ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... must warn of the colours that adorn The soaps ambitious foreigners bring in; They are often very pretty, but to use them is a pity, For they're very detrimental to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... success; Proximate extent of these supplies; Slavery, the central power of the industrial interests, depending on Manufactures and Commerce; Abolitionists contributing to this result; Protection prostrate; Free Trade dominant; The South triumphant; Country ambitious of territorial aggrandizement; The world's peace disturbed; Our policy needs modifying to meet contingencies; Defeat of Mr. Clay; War with Mexico; Results unfavorable to renewal of Protective policy; Dominant political party at the North gives its adhesion to Free Trade; Leading Abolition paper ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... for such souls, the worn and weary father of a brood of hungry children, the widow struggling with adverse fate in an effort to clothe and educate a child, the tired shop girl who uses all her earnings to sustain her parents, the ambitious boy or girl eager for a chance in life, and the poor cripple or invalid seeking health. You will find them all about you. Do not be afraid to use a dollar here or there to give these worthy ones a happy surprise, no matter ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a simple wedding before," explained Katy. "I'm not ambitious, you see. I want to keep things pretty much as they are every day, only with a little more of everything because of there being more people to provide for. If I were attempting to make it a beautiful, picturesque wedding, we should get as tired as anybody, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... South is full of ... thousands of little boys who one day may be, and some of whom will be lynched." "And the babies, the dear, little, helpless babies ... have that sooner or later to look to. They will laugh and play and sing and grow up, and perhaps be ambitious,—just for that." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade to secure standing and cordial recognition among the foremost families. But she overshot the mark. The failure of Mr. Allen was known. The costly ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... represent Americanisms, that the vulgar of the great republic, and it is admitted there are enough of the class, never say "summat" or "somethink," which are low English, but not low American, dialect. The in-and-in Yankee says "suth-in." In a hundred other words have these ambitious ladies done injustice to our vulgar, who are not vulgar, according to the laws of Cockayne, in the smallest degree. "The Broadway," for instance, is no more used by an American than "the Congress," or "the United States of ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ambitious young hunters did not wish to be robbed of any part of the credit of their enterprise—which they knew would be the case if Hugot were to accompany them. Not that Hugot was by any means a noted hunter—quite the contrary—nor a warrior neither, notwithstanding he had been ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... of his mother, strengthened the Huguenot cause; which could no longer be described, by the agents of the French court with foreign powers, as a mere rising of slight importance, the work only of Conde, Coligny, and a few other ambitious ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... 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
... servants of God behold the wicked prospering and the just oppressed; when they see the ambitious, the covetous, the unscrupulous preferred and honored, and they themselves plotted against and rejected, their heart is not disturbed, because they know first of all that "to them that love God, all things work together ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... his Graeco-Byzantine mother Theofano, had inherited her love of the southern lands, and therefore generally occupied his palace on the Aventine, installed himself as Emperor, and cherished a plan of converting Rome into the capital of the German Empire. He was now twenty years old, ambitious, crochety, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... ago a small group of photographers in New York City and vicinity formed a nucleus for the institution of a society. Its name was ambitious—The Pictorial Photographers of America; its aims and objects sounded visionary, almost fantastic. Already many times printed, they bear repetition and have been incorporated in a separate page in this book. In one sense these aims were visionary, because they were thought out and formulated ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... are almost always together. Longstreet's corps complain of this sometimes, as they say that they seldom get a chance of detached service, which falls to the lot of Ewell. It is impossible to please Longstreet more than by praising Lee. I believe these two Generals to be as little ambitious and as thoroughly unselfish as any men in the world. Both long for a successful termination of the war, in order that they may retire into obscurity. Stonewall Jackson (until his death the third in command of their army) was just such another simple-minded servant of his country. It is understood ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... he considered such, at his table, because it was a great thing to talk about; but he never could endure what he called 'sharp fellows.' Probably, he cherished this feeling out of compliment to his two sons, who gave their respected parent no uneasiness in that particular. The family were ambitious of forming acquaintances and connexions in some sphere of society superior to that in which they themselves moved; and one of the necessary consequences of this desire, added to their utter ignorance of the world beyond their own ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... who is possessed of perhaps the greatest mind in the Confederacy, is still fettered. They will not let him fight a battle, because he is "ambitious!" When Norfolk was (wickedly) given up, his home and all his possessions fell into the hands of the enemy. He is now without a shelter for his head, bivouacing with his devoted brigade at Chaffin's farm, below ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the deceased is carried 236 away for interment. The performers of these bitter lamentations appear to have all the marks of hideous grief inscribed on their faces, but most of them feel no real concern; some of the girls, young and handsome, near akin to the deceased, are ambitious to disfigure themselves, and they lacerate their pretty faces most lamentably. The more wounds these bear on their cheeks the greater is their grief considered to be. But the corpse being removed the mourners regale themselves ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... innocent. Burr had found other Ohio people too plodding, as he said, but the Blennerhassetts took him seriously, and when Burr in his repeated visits tempted the husband, and flattered the wife, who was ambitious only for her husband, he easily beguiled them into a ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... justified. As a combatant of another nation, I have my standards of comparison by which to judge and I frankly state that I was amazed with the progress that had been made. It is a progress based on a huge scale and therefore less impressive to the layman than if the scale had been less ambitious. What I saw were the foundations of an organisation which can be expanded to handle a fighting-machine which staggers the imagination. What the layman expects to see are Hun trophies and Americans coming out of the line on stretchers. He will ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... 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, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... against rain and snow helped to hold it in place. The soil, as the path showed, was of a pink stone. It cuts easily, and is the stone from which cathedrals have been built. That suggests that to an ambitious young sapling it offers little nutriment, but the pines, at least, seem to thrive on it. For centuries they have thrived on it. They towered over us to the height of eight stories. The ground beneath was hidden by the most exquisite moss, and moss climbed far up the tree trunks ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... argued To corners tight and fast, Would wink at each other and chuckle, And grin at him as he passed, As to say, "My ambitious old fellow, ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... CLOVIS.—When Clovis (481-511), a warlike and ambitious chief of the Merovingian family of princes, became king of the Franks, they numbered but a few thousand warriors. The remnant of the Roman dominion on the Seine and the Loire he annexed, after having put to death Syagrius, the Roman governor, who was ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Treaty of Versailles, Parts I. and XIII., the former constituting a League of Nations, the latter, in pursuance of a recital that universal peace "can be established only if it is based upon social justice," wholly occupied with a sufficiently ambitious scheme for the regulation by the League of all questions relating to "Labour" which ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... the Institution in Pall Mall). Other subjects of his pictures were: The Poet reading his Manuscript Play of Five Acts to a Friend; Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth; The Nightmare; The Mathematician's Abstraction (the latter purchased by Lord Northwick). His most ambitious work in oils (upwards of seventeen feet in length) was called A Trip to Ascot Races. His last work, The Enthusiast (the first we have mentioned), was exhibited at Somerset House at the time ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... Peyrelongue, a short, thin, carroty young man, with a pronounced nose and prominent cheek-bones, belonged to Tarbes, where his father and mother had lately died, leaving him at the utmost some seven or eight thousand francs a year. Extremely ambitious, he had been unable to find such a wife as he desired in his native province—a well-connected young woman capable of helping him to push both forward and upward in the world; and so he had joined the Hospitality, and betook himself ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... against his tendencies to dissipation, saying that a young man of his prospects should not damage them for the sake of passing gratification. Gregory felt the force of these words, for he was exceedingly ambitious, and bent upon accumulating wealth and at the same time making a ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... sailing now. How long had it needed to win her—three years? He had loved her for three years. Well, he would have his reward; and then, his passion satisfied, he would turn his mind to those far-reaching, ambitious schemes, whereof the end was ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... splendor in the pageantries of triumph at Pondicherry; he set up on the scene of his victory a stately column, bearing in four languages inscriptions celebrating his fame; he had treasure, power, and influence even to his ambitious heart's content. When Mirzapha Jung died, shortly after his accession to the government of the Deccan, Dupleix held equal influence over his successor. He might well have believed that his glory was complete, his plans perfected; he might well have believed that he ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... even without the bar. The social show provided by Ministers' and members' wives and their visiting friends is itself a subtle study in the art of getting on in the new world, which is at the root of all immigration. Bridge for money and dining out with your friend's wife are within the reach of any ambitious immigrant. The Smart Set in Ottawa is an exotic colony all by itself. Montreal and Toronto and Winnipeg can merely copy it. Some of the farmers have their eye on the Set; no, not to abolish it. Women must have their share in the Government. Petticoats and politics are affinities. Farmers ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... generals who had contributed toward his triumph. Only one incident marred the tranquillity of Siuenti's reign. The great statesman, Ho Kwang, had sunk quietly into private life as soon as he found the emperor capable of governing for himself; but his wife Hohien was more ambitious and less satisfied with her position, although she had effected a marriage between her daughter and Siuenti. This lady was only one of the queens of the ruler, and not the empress. Hohien, to further her ends, determined to poison the empress, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Dissembling to the height, can sooth and smile, Profess, and sometimes weep:— No, he'll betray him, as he did thy Brother; Richard the Fourth was thus deluded by him. No, let him swear and promise what he will, They are but steps to his own ambitious End; And only makes the Fool, thy credulous Husband, A silly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... is another marvelous songster, in speaking of whom it is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... colored men, or mulattoes, beheld, with an eye burning with jealousy, the superior power and ascendency of the blacks. Hence arose the horrors of a civil war. Equality had been proclaimed, and anarchy produced. In this frightful chaos, the ambitious mulattoes, whose insatiable desire of equality had first disturbed the peace of the island, perished miserably beneath the vengeance of the very slaves whom they had themselves roused from subjection ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... in England, thought so by himself, as well as by others this little pure being had been disappointed in him. He could not get over it. He reckoned the one judgment worth all the others. Those whose direct or indirect flatteries had been poured at his feet, were the proud, the worldly, the ambitious, the interested, the corrupted; their praise was given to what they esteemed, and that, his candour said, was the least estimable part of him. Beneath all that, this truth-loving, truth-discerning little spirit had found enough to weep for. She ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... admire. Proud to be brief, for brevity must please, I grow obscure; the follower of ease Wants nerve and soul; the lover of sublime Swells to bombast; while he who dreads that crime, Too fearful of the whirlwind rising round, A wretched reptile, creeps along the ground. The bard, ambitious fancies who displays, And tortures one poor thought a thousand ways, Heaps prodigies on prodigies; in woods Pictures the dolphin, and the boar in floods! Thus ev'n the fear of faults to faults betrays, Unless a master-hand conduct the lays. Aemilium circa ludum faber imus et ungues Exprimet, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... she never proposed to see again. The spectre in pointing had put a mark on this woman who was arrogant, ambitious and ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... have been developed. His eyes were fixed upon Europe; he saw in the discoveries of Columbus a means rather than an end; and looked to them simply as a source of revenue with the help of which he could carry on his ambitious schemes. And when, as other captains made voyages confirming and extending the work of Columbus, he did begin to understand the significance of what had been done, he realised too late that the Admiral had been given powers far in excess of ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... did," assented 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 affectionately from girlhood ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... but of which I had not the smallest conception, nor should have met with any more concern than I did when it really arrived, in the year 1742; by which time I had lost all taste for courts and princes and power, as was natural to one who never felt an ambitious thought for himself. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... and check desire In it's soaring, when you'll woe: Damon may in Love require Thestyles and Laura too: When Shepherds too ambitious are, And Court Astrea on a Throne; Like to the shooting of a Star, They fall, and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... rival was Sweden. That power early acquired a large amount of territory to the east of the Baltic—including the mouths of the Neva, where St. Petersburg now stands—and long harboured ambitious schemes of further conquest. In the troublous times when the Poles overran the Tsardom of Muscovy, she took advantage of the occasion to annex a considerable amount of territory, and her expansion in this direction went on in intermittent fashion until ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... there were people working all around us, and one old chap, with a red shirt on, was so ambitious about getting his turnips lifted that I don't believe he even knocked off for noon. We thought he would never quit at night either. ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... lunch with us on Wednesday. Her remarkable restoration to health has attracted a good deal of attention, and has given Ernest a certain reputation which does not come amiss to him. Not that he is ambitious; a more unworldly man does not live; but his extreme reserve and modesty have obscured the light that is now beginning to shine. We all enjoyed Miss Clifford's visit. She is one of the freshest, most original creatures ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss |
