"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honor us with their presence during practice," announced Nora. "I asked Jessica to-day, and she said that they didn't want to know how we intended to play, for then they could wax enthusiastic and make a great deal more noise. It is their ambition to become loud and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... same will-o'-the-wisp liberty, how thankful he was to rest here quietly, peacefully, for the remainder of his days; at last he knew what were the things that were alone, in this world, worth striving for—not money, ambition, success, but love for one's own little bit of country that one called home, the patient resting in the heritage of all those accumulating traditions that ancestors had been making, slowly, ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... examples of girls of high birth and exemplary virtues who practised it with impunity: it gave a finish to the character of a woman, proved she would sometimes act for herself, not always be in leading-strings; it gave a taste of power, gratified her ambition; in short, flirtation was the very acme of enjoyment, and gave a decided ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of his own or his wife's; but, however honourably meant, such a promise would be worth very little, and would be utterly scorned by Narcisse. Besides, how could he thwart the love of his daughter and the ambition of his ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an orderly life, but at worst it was only a heedless life. I had been a fool, but not a damned one. There was in me something loftier than a desire for pleasure, something worthier than material ambition. What else lay latent—if anything—I may only surmise. It ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the conviction that the young girl had spoken the truth, and had brusquely brushed the veil from his foolish eyes. He WAS in love with Mrs. Peyton! That was what his doubts and hesitation regarding Susy meant. That alone was the source, secret, and limit of his vague ambition. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... me. As I travelled along in the train I could not conceal from myself an increasing feeling of comfort; it was obvious that the absolutely useless worries of the past weeks could not have been endured any longer, and that my life's ambition demanded a complete severance from them. On the evening of the same day I arrived in Geneva; here I wished to rest a little and pull myself together, so as to arrange my plan of life calmly. As I had an idea of making another attempt to settle in Italy, I proposed, after my former experience, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... East the spirit of "non-separateness" is inculcated as steadily from childhood up, as in the West the spirit of rivalry. Personal ambition, personal feelings and desires, are not encouraged to grow so rampant there. When the soil is naturally good, it is cultivated in the right way, and the child grows into a man in whom the habit of subordination of one's ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... he had got up a magnificent regiment, he had spent thousands of pounds on it. Ferdy was of the opinion that this was wasted money—he himself intended to have a real regiment, to be a colonel in the Guards. Geordie looked as if he thought that a superficial ambition and could see beyond it; his own most definite view was that he would have back the hounds. He didn't see why papa didn't have them—unless it was because he wouldn't take ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... impossible standard of living. One idea mastered him—to give Africa to the world. His life was a success, as all lives must be which have a single aim. Life was clear, elemental almost to him, and to the man whose ambition is a unit; who sees but one goal, shining clearly ahead, success is inevitable, though it may be masked under the guise of poverty and hardship. Livingstone had a higher and nobler ambition than the mere pecuniary sum he might receive, or the plaudits ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... party, each drinking to the health of the young married pair, and then bottle and glass were thrown away and broken. The whole party then proceeded on their way to the young folks' house. To be the successful runner in this race was an object of considerable ambition, and the whole town and neighbourhood took great interest in it. At riding weddings it was the great ambition of farmers' sons to succeed in winning the braize, and they would even borrow racing ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... though in a manner which rather resembled stepping up behind a carriage than getting into one. The Antiquary was indeed uncommonly delighted; for, like many other men who spend their lives in obscure literary research, he had a secret ambition to appear in print, which was checked by cold fits of diffidence, fear of criticism, and habits of indolence and procrastination. "But," thought he, "I may, like a second Teucer, discharge my shafts from behind the shield of my ally; and, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... destroy hope in the future of the Irish peasant cultivator, although this trimness is by no means so general as it might be. Mr. Mahony has also, by way of showing his people how things should be done, a model farm and dairy, of such moderate size as not to be beyond the ambition of a successful tenant. The proprietor has also, like Mr. Bland and Mr. Butler, of Waterville, a successful salmon fishery, great part of the produce whereof goes, at some little advance on sixpence per pound, to the agents of a London firm, who also get an enormous ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the temperament of those who felt them. "We have seen," said Charles Greville, "such a stirring-up of all the elements of society as nobody ever dreamt of; we have seen a general saturnalia—ignorance, vanity, insolence, poverty, ambition, escaping from every kind of restraint, ranging over the world, and turning it topsy-turvy as it pleased. All Europe exhibits the result—a mass of ruin, terror, and despair." Matthew Arnold, young and ardent, and in some ways democratic, wrote in a different vein: "The hour ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... is, at once you feel it to lie outside the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. Shakespeare's men are fine, brave, companionable fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy, ambition; of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter and rage, of the joy and stress of living. But self-sacrifice scarcely enters into their notion of the scheme of things, and they are by no means men to go to death for an idea. We remember ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... him do more and express less, but he never was intended as an example, further than to show, that early perversion of mind and morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature and the stimulus of travel (except ambition, the most powerful of all excitements) are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather misdirected. Had I proceeded with the Poem, this character would have deepened as he drew to the close; for the outline which I once meant to fill up for him was, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... learn. She had the notion that he might become something better, something higher than she had been. But for him school had no charms; his school was the cool stalls in the big livery stable near at hand; the arena of his pursuits its sawdust floor; the height of his ambition, to be a horseman. Either here or in the racing stables at the Fair-grounds he spent his truant hours. It was a school that taught much, and Patsy was as apt a pupil as he was a constant attendant. He learned strange things about horses, and fine, sonorous oaths that sounded ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of his wages and remitting them monthly to Goa, or Nowsaree, is one of the ancient myths of Anglo-India. I do not mean to say that if you encourage your Boy to do this he will refuse; on the contrary, he likes it. But the ordinary Boy, I believe, is not a prey to ambition and, if he can find service to his mind, easily reconciles himself to living on his wages, or, as he terms it, in the practical spirit of oriental imagery, "eating" them. The conditions he values seem to be,— permanence, respectful treatment, immunity from kicks and cuffs and from ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... came to church on a rainy day in the new carriage, and gave his hand to Ursula to help her out, all the inhabitants flocked to the square,—as much to see the caleche and question the coachman, as to criticize the goddaughter, to whose excessive pride and ambition Massin, Cremiere, the post master, and their wives attributed this extravagant folly of ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... handled work. The poem tells the story of a young French fellow, an orphan, who goes to the wars as substitute for his friend Jean. After rising from rank to rank by bravery, he returns to his home just as his sweetheart, Perrine, enters the church to wed Jean. The girl had been his one ambition, and now in his despair he reenlists and begs to be placed in the thickest of danger. When he falls, they find on his breast a withered spray from the pear-tree under which Perrine had first plighted troth. On these simple lines the music builds up a drama. From ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... years Grizzly Dick was the terror of that county and all the adjoining ones. To take him, alive or dead, was the ambition of half the sheriffs in California. After my first few escapades I had plenty of helpers. Men as desperate and as dare-devil as I gathered around me and we carried things with a high hand. I cared nothing for the profits of being an outlaw. What I wanted was revenge on society, and the excitement ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... also considerable, and he spoke Italian, German, French, and Spanish with fluency. His beauty was remarkable; his personal fascinations acknowledged by either sex; but as a commander of men, excepting upon the battle-field, he possessed little genius. His ambition was the ambition of a knight-errant, an adventurer, a Norman pirate; it was a personal and tawdry ambition. Vague and contradictory dreams of crowns, of royal marriages, of extemporized dynasties, floated ever before him; but he was himself always the hero of his own romance. He sought ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... supposed that a small-footed woman must be one of rank, but this is an error. It is a matter of family ambition, even among the poor, to have in the family at least one such deformity. Gentlemen marry only small-footed women, and their child might make a good match. If large-footed, this would be impossible; but such hopes are sometimes doomed ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... peaceable an' proper, but you know de trouble is Freckled Frances is jealous-hearted, an' she ain't got no principle. I tell you, Miss Bettie, when niggers gits white enough to freckle, you look out for 'em! Dey jes advanced fur enough along to show white ambition an' nigger principle! An' dat's a ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... their servitude is not to God's law but to man's ambition is creeping over the people here. That is a very hopeful sign. When a man first feels he is a slave he begins to grow grey inside, to get moody and irritable. The sore spot becomes more sensitive the more he broods. At last to touch it becomes dangerous. For, from such pent-up ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... of undoubted talents, but of unappeasable ambition, had at an early period of his life, while Secretary of War, and still a young man, aspired to the office of President. By his ability and patriotic course during the war of 1812, and subsequently by a brilliant career as ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... age, with my relations, I hoped for a moment, if not to repair my fortune, at least to assure myself an honorable independent position in its place. Several of my friends, perhaps, less capable than myself had made rapid strides in diplomacy. I had a velleity of ambition. I had only to request, and I was attached to the legation of Gerolstein. Unfortunately, some days after this nomination, a gambling debt contracted with a man I hated placed me in the most cruel embarrassment. I had exhausted every resource. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... windows, and where she would have to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a living, and sleep in a kennel. The prettiness, the pertness, and the naive contentedness of the child thus realizing an ambition touched her deeply. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Partners, in Dutchess County, New York, and nineteen years later came to the city of New York to fill a clerkship in a public office. His family was related to that of Washington Irving by marriage; he was himself united to Irving by literary sympathy and ambition, and the two young men now formed a friendship which endured through life. They published the Salmagundi papers together, and they always corresponded; but with Irving literature became all in all, and with Paulding a favorite relaxation from political life and a merely collateral ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to be the easiest task possible. Francis Wade was an invalid virtuoso, who detested business, and whose ambition was to be known as man of taste. The possessor of a small independent income, he had resided at North End ever since his father's death, and had made the place a miniature Strawberry Hill. When, at his sister's urgent wish, he assumed the sole responsibility of the estate, he put ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of navigation that irritated a new young officer on the bridge, who felt that the Bismarckian policy, though perhaps sure, was not speedy enough for his vaulting ambition. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... loves sincerely and devotedly; he respects the woman who has inspired him with the noblest sentiment of which his soul is capable. At thirty his heart, hardened by deceit and ill-requited affection, and pre-occupied by projects of worldly ambition, regards love only as an agreeable pastime, and woman's heart as a toy, which he may fling aside the moment it ceases to amuse him. At twenty he is ready to abandon everything for her whom he idolises—rank, wealth, the future!—they weigh as nothing in the balance against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... passed without special incident. The boy, filled with that quenchless ambition to know, which characterizes the finest minds, entered eagerly upon his studies and faithfully observed his promises. If his tender soul warped and his fresh, receptive mind shriveled under the religious tutelage he received, no one but himself knew it, not ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to an understanding the sooner, because in their vices, like their good qualities, they closely resembled each other. Danton, like Dumouriez, only wanted the impulse of the Revolution. Principles were trifles with him; what suited his energy and his ambition was that tumultuous turmoil which cast down and elevated men, from the throne to nothing, from nothing to fortune and power. The intoxication of movement was to Danton, as to Dumouriez, the continual need of their disposition: the Revolution was to them ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Zagatai were long considered as the khans or sovereigns of this fair empire, which fell into civil war and anarchy, through the divisions and subdivisions of the hordes, the uncertain laws of succession, and the ambition of the ministers of state, who reduced their degenerate masters to mere state puppets, and elevated or deposed successive khans at their pleasure; and the divided and distracted country was subjected or oppressed by the invasions of the khans of Kashgar, who ruled over the Calmucks or Getes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... walk in, as the old collect says. How often, in real life, do we see any one making a clean sweep of all his conditions and surroundings, to follow the path of the soul? How often do we see a man abjure wealth, or resist ambition, or disregard temperament, unexpectedly? Not once, I think, to speak for myself, in ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lady Artemis Morals has some gift for publicity. But Alfred won't marry a title—say's he rather thinks of making a title for himself. The boy's got ambition. The cash is forthcoming. And you ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Certainly, were this officer attired like an ordinary civilian, no one would have taken him for one of England's bravest and most efficient sea-captains; he would have passed rather as some thoughtful, well-educated, and refined gentleman, of retired habits, diffident of himself, and a stranger to ambition. He wore an undress rear-admiral's uniform, as a matter of course; but he wore it carelessly, as if from a sense of duty only; or conscious that no arrangement could give him a military air. Still all about his person was faultlessly neat, and ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was contented with this article, felt, as he sat in his chambers in the Albany, that something else was wanting to his happiness. This sort of life was all very well. Ambition was a grand thing, and it became him, as a Palliser and a future peer, to make politics his profession. But might he not spare an hour or two for Amaryllis in the shade? Was it not hard, this life of his? Since he had been told that Lady ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... near; for the softening of an obdurate landlord's heart; for strength in temptation, light in darkness, salvation from vice; for a friend in friendlessness; for that miracle of miracles, an opportunity to struggling ambition; for the ending of a dark night, the breaking of day; and, oh! for God's own miracle to the bedside-watchers—the change for the better, when death is there and the apothecary's skill too far, far away. The poor, the miserable, the unhappy, they can show their miracles ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... ambition indeed, and one that, so far as my experience goes, very few knights entertain. I see yearly scores of young knights depart, no small proportion of whom never place foot on Rhodes again, although doubtless many of them will hasten back again as soon as the danger of an ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... year 1414, Henry V., influenced by the persuasions of Chichely, Archbishop of Canterbury, by the dying injunction of his royal father, not to allow the kingdom to remain long at peace, or more probably by those feelings of ambition, which were no less natural to his age and character, than consonant with the manners of the time in which he lived, resolved to assert that claim to the crown of France which his great grandfather, King Edward the Third, had ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... race. What passions had worn those furrows? what vigils had hollowed those eyeballs? Was this the face of a happy man, with whom everything had succeeded, who, having been born to wealth and of an excellent family, had married the woman he loved; who had known neither the wearing cares of ambition, the toil of money-getting, nor the stings of wounded self-love? It is true, he suffered from liver complaint; but why was it that, although I had hitherto been satisfied with this answer, it now appeared to me childish and even foolish? Why did all these marks ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... of living in England is altogether too high. Middle-class people are too apt to live up to their incomes, if not beyond them: affecting a degree of "style" which is most unhealthy in its effects upon society at large. There is an ambition to bring up boys as gentlemen, or rather "genteel" men; though the result frequently is, only to make them gents. They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... dissipated our fatigue. We had at last conquered this formidable crest. We overlooked all the others, and the thoughts which Mont Blanc alone can inspire affected us with a deep emotion. It was ambition satisfied; and to me, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... would be obeyed in his own kingdom, and the Venetian should out. Upon the whole, all circumstances which I have seen, considered, it is to me apparent enough, that these Ambassadors of Venice, in this contest, did nourish double ambition, either to carry the house against an English Ambassador, or that an English Ambassador should carry it against them; but my business throughout hath been never to come in any ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... the trenches. The son had been wounded, and the father had obeyed a hurried call, found his son dead, and himself died of the shock on the return voyage. Wesley, mourning the man who had been his stanch friend, was guiltily conscious of his thwarted ambition. "There goes my city church," he thought, and flung the thought back at himself in anger at his own self-seeking. He was forced into accepting the first opportunity which offered. His mother had an annuity, which he himself had insisted upon for her greater comfort. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... essential of the young man, or young woman, who would lay the foundation of a career. The choice of the school to which one will go and the calling he will adopt must be influenced in a very large measure by his environments, trend of ambition, natural capacity, possible opportunities in the proposed calling, and the means at ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... dusty road, the fires of his ambition kept on kindling with every step, and his pace, even in the cool of the early morning, sent his hat to his hand, and plastered his long lank hair to his temples and the back of his sturdy sunburnt neck. The sun was hardly star-pointing the horizon ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the age of fifty, terminate his active and extraordinary life. To ambition, he owed both his greatness and his ruin; with all his failings, he possessed great and admirable qualities, and had he kept himself within due bounds, he would have lived and died without an equal. The virtues of the ruler and of the hero, prudence, justice, firmness, and ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... to absorb all my attention; while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... and in a few days would be the owner of a delightful little house in the Rue Saint-Lazare; he was going to be married to a charming woman, he would have about twenty thousand francs a year, and could give the reins to his ambition; the young lady loved him, and he would be connected with several respectable families. In short, he was in full sail on the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... satisfaction basis of; standards, effect of custom on; value of science; values; vs. moral values; vs. practical values. See also Art. Affection. See Love. Age, influence of on learning. Altruism. Ambition. Animal, instincts compared with human; man as an; man a social. Appreciation. See AEsthetic. Aristocracy. Aristotle. Arnold, Matthew. Art, and emotion; and morals; and nature; appreciation of; as an industry; as propaganda; as realization of ideals; as recreation; ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... I have here described. When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any one of them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition, and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no vulgar destinies. But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience. The same equality which allows every citizen to conceive these lofty hopes, renders all the citizens less able to realize ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... youth, a 25 years' period of continuous crescent expansiveness, he had learned to view them, and his slow death was the result, not of mere weariness in working, but of the adverse circumstances that thwarted and finally wrecked the one unworthy ambition that had fatally taken possession of his heart. Of Scott Ruskin says, "What good Scott had in him to do, I find no words full enough to express... Scott is beyond comparison the greatest intellectual ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of gold, nor the cupidity of conquest, those characteristics which have subordinated other portions of the New World to the restless ambition of man, were the causes that have revolutionized both the physical character and the social conditions of the now wealthy and prosperous state of Utah. As Bancroft very forcibly states: Utah was settled upon an entirely new idea ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... quiet, methodical way life went on with the occupants of the saloon for some time; but at length ambition entered into and seized upon the imagination of Miss Stanhope, and she determined to learn to steer. Hour after hour had she watched the helmsmen standing in more or less graceful attitudes at the wheel, with their sinewy ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... moral strength regained, prove that the work of the Spirit is not to be measured by puny human standards of judgment, prove that simple things—the things from which we expect the least, in which we put the least ambition or worldly desire may be those which will yield the "hundred ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... mind; and thy purpose comes more, methinks, from hasty pride than from prudence. But it may be there is a wide difference between my humble ways and the high thoughts thou hast; for whilst yet in thy childhood thou wast full always of ambition and desire of command, and now thou art experienced in battles, and hast formed thyself upon the manner of foreign chiefs. I know therefore well, that as thou hast taken this into thy head, it is useless to dissuade thee from ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... three such poems if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six years would be a famous gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays—my greatest ambition—when I do ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... but one apology for the production of a metrical essay, composed chiefly of imperfect and immature pieces:—the ambition to contribute towards the fund of Christmas entertainment, in which agreeable labour I see many popular names engaged,—and among them, one, the most deservedly popular in the literature of the day. The favour with which an influential portion of the press has ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... boy," said the King, "and too fond of my comfort; besides, I have no longer any ambition. When an actor once realises that he will never be a Charles Kean or a Macready, then come peace and the enjoyment of life. Now, with you it is different: you are, if I may say so in deep affection, young and foolish. Your project is ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... said, accompany him on his expedition. If the Governor ordered them to disband, they would defy him. "They drank damnation to their souls", if they should prove untrue to him. Touched by these proofs of confidence, and fired perhaps with ambition, the young man yielded, and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Achmath would go to the Emperor, and say: "Such a government is vacant, or will be vacant on such a day. So-and-So is a proper man for the post." And the Emperor would reply: "Do as you think best;" and the father of the girl was immediately appointed to the government. Thus either through the ambition of the parents, or through fear of the Minister, all the beautiful women were at his beck, either as wives or mistresses. Also he had some five-and-twenty sons who held offices of importance, and some of these, under the protection ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... us take Devoutness. When unbalanced, one of its vices is called Fanaticism. Fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme. When an intensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the feeling that a certain superhuman person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one of the first things that happens is that it idealizes the devotion itself. To adequately realize ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... regains his heritage and, through marriage, the crown of Norfolk in England in addition. The story was of a nature to make a strong appeal to the Scandinavians, especially the Danes, in England. It achieved, in fiction, the ambition which the Danes realized under Swen and Canute, when these sovereigns governed both Denmark and England. It was a Danish story; it was developed after 950, which was about the time the third stage in the development of the Hroar-Helgi story had been reached; and it was a creation of ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... monument by Giovanni Pisano is the tomb of Benedict XI. in the church of S. Domenico at Perugia. The Pope, whose life was so obnoxious to the ambition of Philip le Bel that his timely death aroused suspicion of poison, lies asleep upon his marble bier with hands crossed in an attitude of peaceful expectation.[64] At his head and feet stand angels drawing back ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... about the grandeur or the glitter of life. But in directing the employment of labour, they would find room for the exercise of all the powers of their minds, of their best affections, and of whatever was worthy in their ambition. Their occupation, so far from being a limited sphere of action, is one which may give scope to minds of the most various capacity. While one man may undertake those obvious labours of benevolent superintendence which are of immediate and pressing necessity, another may devote himself ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... East, where fortunes were made by looking wise for a few moments every morning and devoting the rest of the day to samisens and flutes. He found the glorious country of Japan. The beguiling tea-houses, and softly swinging sampans were all too distracting. They sang ambition to ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... double-dealing could not be laid against them, for the ground of their grievances had been the same from the outset, and their conduct consistent with single motives; and if independence had been mentioned at all as yet, it was only as an ulterior resort, and not as an aim or ambition. The king and the Ministry, on the other hand, were wedded to strict notions of authority in the central government, and measured a citizen's fidelity by the readiness with which he submitted to its policy and legislation. Protests and discussion about "charters" and "liberties" were distasteful ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin'" to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... of 'King Arthur' must henceforth be ranked amongst our national masterpieces. In it we behold the crowning achievement of the author's life. His ambition cannot rise to a greater altitude. He has accomplished that which once had its seductions for the deathless and majestic mind of Milton. He has now assumed a place among the kings ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... a public speaker, and these were considerable. He had eloquence, wit, humour, and sufficient assurance to place them all in the fullest light. His speeches in parliament were much admired, and the passion of ambition was now kindled in his mind: he determined to be a leading man in the senate; and whilst he pursued this object with enthusiasm, his private affairs were entirely neglected. Ambition and economy never can agree. Sir Hyacinth, however, found it necessary ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... long poles, which fluttered about in the breeze. According to the account of our interpreter, which had to pass from Thibetian into Hindostanee before it could clothe itself in English, the cause of this dilapidation was the state of wealth and ambition at which the Lamas had arrived, and the consequent interposition of Gulab Singh to take down their pride and ease them of a little of their wealth, both of which he accomplished in the style to which he was so partial, by slaughtering ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... silence, wishing that she too could hope. But whichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. She believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery—that conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant's imagination, of his boyish ambition to achieve the impossible—and every hopeful symptom pointed, in her mind, only to a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the reader in suspense, the little man was Benjamin Quelch, clerk in the office of Messrs. Cobble & Clink, coal merchants, and he was about to carry out a desperate resolution. Most men have some secret ambition; Benjamin's was twofold. For years he had yearned to wear a soft felt hat and to make a trip to Paris, and for years Fate, in the person of Mrs. Quelch, had stood in the way and prevented the indulgence of his longing. Quelch being, as we have hinted, exceptionally small ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... and said that God did not look so low. Here are the facts of the case. Our defunct sister, whose canonisation the order are now endeavouring to obtain at the court of the Pope, and would have had it if they could have paid the proper costs of the papal brief; this Petronille, then, had an ambition to have her name included in the Calendar of Saints, which was in no way prejudicial to our order. She lived in prayer alone, would remain in ecstasy before the altar of the virgin, which is on the side of the fields, and pretend so distinctly to hear the angels flying in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... child! Sorry, old girl, but I'm in training. Will you order broiled steak and pale ale for me? I'm going to box Tricky Sal, the coloured girl-boxer from the Other Side. Wonder how she'll like my upper-cut and left-hand jab! Isn't it glorious, people? I've got my ambition! I'm a White Hope! See if we don't fill the Colidrome ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... all have forsaken him, his hope blasted, his ambition gone, and he feels that no one has confidence in him, no one cares for him. In this condition he wends his way to an institution of reform, a penniless, homeless, degraded, lost and hopeless drunkard. Here is our subject, how ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... perpetual dissonance. The common condition of human society must indeed be accepted; tumult, hatred, fraud, crime, the ferocity of self-interest, the tenacity of prejudice, are perennial; but the philosopher sighs over it; his heart is not in it; his ambition is to see human history from a height; his ear is set to catch the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contentment, and knowledge (of Brahma), should, O king, be striven after by Brahmanas to the best of their ability for the attainment of success. I shall now tell thee the duties of Kshatriyas. They are not unknown to thee. Sacrifice, learning, exertion, ambition,[69] wielding 'the rod of punishment,' fierceness, protection of subjects, knowledge of the Vedas, practise of all kinds of penances, goodness of conduct, acquisition of wealth, and gifts to deserving persons,—these, O king, well performed and acquired by persons of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... endeavored, by careful culture, to produce larger, tenderer, and sweeter varieties. Of an adaptable character, under careful treatment the plant has evolved in a docile fashion, and has ended by giving us what the ambition of the gardener desired. To-day we have gone far beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the half-jaw ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... did not satisfy the ambition of the farmer, and from the time he came into the possession of Mount Vernon he was a persistent purchaser of lands adjoining the property. In 1760 he bargained with one Clifton for "a tract called ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... gang by the links o' the wild rowin' burnie, Whaur aft in my mornin' o' life I did stray, Whaur luve was invited and cares were beguiled By Mary an' me, on the braes o' Bedlay. Sae luvin', sae movin', I 'll tell her my story, Unmixt wi' the deeds o' ambition for glory, Whaur wide spreadin' hawthorns, sae ancient and hoary, Enrich the sweet breeze on the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... some men," replied the other, "in whom certain humours and desires are so strong, that the gratification thereof is worth the whole of the rest of a life's happiness, and gratified ambition may be sufficient in this case to compensate for the sacrifice of peace. I mean not to speak one word against the master that you serve. He has, as you say, fought the battles of liberty for many years: he is a brave and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... could pass the spoon to, and from, the bowl, and her mouth; and she was evidently taking no inconsiderable trouble to qualify herself for that happy state, which Pope tell us is the object of every woman's ambition, that of being Queen for life, the royal road to which, in this country, lies through a course of gormandizing. The same custom extends to the wives of the great men, who undergo a similar operation before marriage. On the morning of their wedding-day they ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... felt a vague melancholy when he thought of his honeymoon. He smiled with resignation especially when he called the phantom of hunger to his aid. He had never had ambition or pretensions. His tastes were simple, his thoughts limited; but his heart, untouched till then, had dreamed of a very different divinity. In his youth when, tired by his day's labor, after a frugal meal, he lay down on a poor bed, he dreamed of a smiling, affectionate ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... order that ennui shall not drive you, like myself, prematurely from the world so soon as the season for pleasure shall have ended, you should leave the emotions of ambition and of public life for the gratification of your riper age. Do not enter into any engagements with the reigning government, and reserve for yourself to hear its eulogium made by those who will have subverted it. That is the French fashion. Each generation ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Page 28: "It is most horrible with the keen sword to gore the finely fibred human frame," and what follows, pleased me mightily. In the second book, the first forty lines in particular are majestic and high-sounding. Indeed, the whole vision of the Palace of Ambition and what follows are supremely excellent. Your simile of the Laplander, "By Niemi's lake, or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone of Solfar-Kapper," [1] will bear comparison with any in Milton for fulness of circumstance and lofty-pacedness ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... to think that when Washington went back to his quiet home on the Potomac he was not as generally beloved as when he took his high office. He had had to disappoint a great many men who looked to him to help their private ambition at the expense of the country. He had had to enforce laws which some people looked upon as unjust. He had differed from various public men as to the war between France and England, and the payment of the debt, and other things, and it is so easy for all of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... effort to restrain his expenditure. She had even been accused by those judicious persons who are always ready with an estimate of their neighbours' motives, of having encouraged poor Denis's improvidence for the gratification of her own ambition. She had in fact, in the early days of their marriage, tried to launch him in politics, and had perhaps drawn somewhat heavily on his funds in the first heat of the contest; but the experiment ending in failure, as Denis Peyton's experiments ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... chief ambition is to become an artist, but who has no friends with whom to realize his hopes, has a way opened to him to try his powers, and, of course, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... lends a helping hand with the dishes, dusting, or other regular work of the day, she can go to her tubs just that much earlier. Getting up in the wee sma' hours and working by early candle light is misdirected ambition. The maid needs her rest to fit her for her day's labors, and washing well done requires the light of day. Set the breakfast hour ahead half an hour and so gain a little extra time. Foresight and extra planning on Saturday will provide certain left-overs from Sunday's meals which can be quickly ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... My ambition when leaving school was first to endeavor to become independent financially, so that I might enjoy my old age; then, if it were possible, to gain that independence early in life by economy, by earning for myself what I earn for my employer; to try to make it possible for the Negro farmer ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... while ago he had been happy there. Only an hour or two since he was meditating, between the moves of the game, on the very words he meant to use in telling Irene that he loved her. Only an hour or two since every thought was full of hope and ambition, since the path of honour stood wide open with a vague bright figure beckoning in its ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... apt to fancy that the world will always go on very much as it goes on now; that it will be guided, not by the will of God, but by the will of man; by man's craft; by man's ambition; by man's self-interest; by man's cravings after the luxuries, and even after the mere necessities of this life. In a word, we are apt to fancy that man, not God, is the master of this earth on which we live, and that men have no king over them ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... off with a perfect bomb, Joey. It was funny! Of course the new man's a city product, and he drew him to the life: rushed and tortured by ambition, tired out at the end of the day, too tired to be possibly amusing, his nerves excited till anything quieter than lower Broadway hurts his ears, all passion and brilliance spent on business, dinners here and there, with ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... protect the government from its enemies, lest, if the bucklers were entire and the swords perfect, they might be tempted, in the heyday of victory, to smite their employers. But this want of confidence never manifested itself toward General Lee, whose conduct satisfied the most suspicious that his ambition was not of glory but of the performance of duty. The army always felt this: the fact that he sacrificed no masses of human beings in desperate charges that he might gather laurels from the spot enriched by their gore. A year or more before he was appointed commander-in-chief of ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... statesmen of England to represent her, we know not.... But we may be permitted to hope that when the union takes place, and we become the great country which British North America is certain to be, it will be an object worthy the ambition of the statesmen of England to be charged with presiding ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his friends, and he trusted them ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... new performers as would suffice to revive the corpse, (if it were a corpse that had ever had a spark of sense or spirit in it,) and make it kick the coroner out of the room.[8] But to one of so high an ambition as Tittlebat Titmouse, how delightful would it not have been, to anticipate becoming (what had been quite impracticable during life) the object of public attention after his death—by means of a flaming dissertation by the coroner on his own zeal and spirit—the nature ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Shakespeare sont tellement des objets de meditation plutot que d'interet ou de curiosite relativement a leurs actes, que, tandis que nous lisons l'un de ses grands caracteres criminels,—Macbeth, Richard, Iago meme,—nous ne songeons pas tant aux crimes qu'ils commettent, qu'a l'ambition, a l'esprit d'aspiration, a l'activite intellectuelle qui les poussent a franchir ces barrieres morales. Les actions nous affectent si peu, que, tandis que les impulsions, l'esprit interieur en toute sa perverse grandeur, paraissent ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... have such a sense of your generous favour, that, to my last hour, I shall have pleasure in contemplating upon it, and be proud of the place I hold in the esteem of such venerable persons, to whom I once had the ambition ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... with anything like sang-froid contemplate his reflection. Yet throughout he bore up stoutly and patiently—and ended by being transferred to the Customs Department. It may be said that the department had long constituted the secret goal of his ambition, for he had noted the foreign elegancies with which its officials always contrived to provide themselves, and had also observed that invariably they were able to send presents of china and cambric to their sisters ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... was naturally the ambition of every officer engaged in pressing "to do the business without any disagreeable accident ensuing," he preferred, did fate ordain it otherwise, that the accident should happen at sea rather than on land, since it was on land that the most disagreeable consequences accrued to the unfortunate victim. ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... made what observations our means afforded, we proceeded to descend. We had accomplished an object of laudable ambition, and beyond the strict order of our instructions. We had climbed the loftiest peak of the Rocky mountains, and looked down upon the snow a thousand feet below; and, standing where never human foot ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... man. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the man of felicity. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be a cordial. To enjoy,—what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! The brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as an elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize in them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is the function of real philosophy. Morality ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... detective father had been accustomed to argue his cases and their perplexities with his only child and for hours at a time he would instruct her in all the details of his profession. It was O'Gorman's ambition that his daughter might become a ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... I have to some of the Great Men of your Nation, particularly to your Lordship, gives me an Ambition of making my Acknowledgements by all the Opportunities I can; and such humble Fruits as my Industry produces I lay at your Lordship's Feet. This is a true Story, of a Man Gallant enough to merit your Protection, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... was grown to some extent in California 40 years and abandoned; it was not so sure in bearing as the French, and it was not the type of prune which we had ambition to excel with. The prune which we grow as the French is the true prune or plum of Agen. We should plant it and let the Oregon people ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... rich countship of Valdemarino." Thus highly did Bodoeri extol Falieri's virtues; and he had a ready answer for all objections, so that at length all voices were unanimous in electing Falieri. Several, however, still continued to allude to his hot, passionate temper, his ambition, and his self-will; but they were met with the reply: "And it is exactly because all these have gone from the old man, that we choose the grey-beard Falieri and not the youth Falieri." And these censuring voices were completely silenced when the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... this honor, all this disaster, lies in the future, for as yet Winslow is only seven-and-twenty, and yet the lines of ambition, of weariness, of hauteur are foreshadowed upon his face; already Time with his light indelible pencil has faintly traced the furrows he by and by will plow that ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... overawing sense of an unseen omnipresent Power, will burst forth with devastating fury, snapping asunder the feebler fetters of human law, and overleaping the barriers of selfish prudence itself; vanity and pride, ambition and covetousness, sensual indulgence and ferocious cruelty, will rise into the ascendancy, and establish their dark throne on ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... drop of blood in my body," Mr. Sabin answered. "Save for my love for her I am a dead man upon the earth. I have no longer politics or ambition. So the past can easily be expunged. Those who must be her ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the picture. But he said, and his tone was not pleasant: "Lord Beauvayse attained the height of his ambition a few ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... from an intercourse, which not the coolness of a single hour has ever interrupted. It would be strange indeed if there were not one single flaw in so bright an emanation from the very soul of the divinity, wearing as it does the form of humanity. I allude to her ambition. It is boundless, almost insane. Caesar himself was not more ambitious. But in her even this is partly a virtue, even in its wildest extravagance; for it is never for herself alone that she reaches so far and so high, but as much or more for her people. She never separates herself ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... statesman, indeed, though possessed of considerable abilities, and great power, had failings, which rendered him unpopular among the Highland chiefs. The devotion which he professed was of a morose and fanatical character; his ambition appeared to be insatiable, and inferior chiefs complained of his want of bounty and liberality. Add to this, that although a Highlander, and of a family distinguished for valour before and since, Gillespie ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... knew what it was to be hipped, I will call it, till he came to be what Pompey was; that is to say, till he arrived at the height of his ambition: nor did thy Lovelace know what it was to be gloomy, till he had completed his wishes upon the most ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... it is, in all literalness; an evangel; a message of glad tidings. It is not merely a truth, it is "the Truth" (p. 1). Let there be no mistake about it: Mr. Wells's ambition is to rank with St. Paul and Mahomet, as the apostle of a new world-religion. He does not in so many words lay claim to inspiration, but it is almost inevitably deducible from his premises. He is uttering the first clear and definite tidings ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... Man's faults of dogmatism, of selfish domination, of sacrifice of personal life to further desired political or economic ends, have roots in the patriarchal family. Man's careless misuse of his own moral ideals for purposes of ambition was certainly fostered by this sense of ownership of women and children with legal power to use ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the king in the most humble expressions, that he might the better shew his gratitude. "As for my condition," said he, "I must own I am not an astrologer, as your majesty has guessed; I only put on the habit of one, that I might succeed the more easily in my ambition to be allied to the most potent monarch in the world. I was born a prince, and the son of a king and of a queen; my name is Kummir al Zummaun; my father is Shaw Zummaun, who now reigns over the islands that are well known by the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... year to have been seized with a temporary fit of ambition, for he had thoughts both of studying law and of engaging in politics. His 'Prayer before the Study of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... doe, or a lady's slipper, beyond the greenwood season. So I say, for the glory of your manhood up and away! Abroad, abroad! My father is right. That is the only ground for such a race and guerdon as you aspire to. I admire your taste, and not less your ambition, my brave boy. Do not thwart him, Sir Fulke," added he, to the baronet, who began to frown: "let him enter the lists with the boldest of us; faint heart never won fair lady! So, forward, Robert! and give me another sweet ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... inflamed with filial love, And anxious hope, to hear my parent's doom, A suppliant to your royal court I come: Our sovereign seat a lewd usurping race With lawless riot and misrule disgrace; To pamper'd insolence devoted fall Prime of the flock, and choicest of the stall: For wild ambition wings their bold desire, And all to mount the imperial bed aspire. But prostrate I implore, O king! relate The mournful series of my father's fate: Each known disaster of the man disclose, Born by his mother to a world of woes! Recite them; nor ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... life to yield; abstractly, not. Ambition is the looting of hell in chase of biting flames swirling above a desert of ashes. As for posthumous fame, it must be about as satisfactory as a draught of ice-water poured down the throat of a man who has died on Sahara. And yet, even if in the end it all means nothing, if 'from ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... danger in remaining away too long from the established sources of spiritual inspiration and uplift, especially when one is reading Ingersol and Tom Paine. I have no fault to find with your ambition to get ahead in the world, but with it 'remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.' ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... that the exports and imports were constantly increasing. The Governors of Bombay and the rest of the Presidencies would be animated by the same spirit, and so you would have all over India, as I have said, a rivalry for good; you would have placed a check on that malignant spirit of ambition which has worked so much evil—you would have no Governor so great that you could not control him, none who might make war when he pleased; war and annexation would be greatly checked, if not entirely prevented; and I do in my conscience believe you would have ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... trouble even without the change of the government. They do not mind disturbing the peace of the country at the present time when the republic exists. It is almost certain that at the first unfurling of the imperial flags they will at once grasp such an opportune moment and try to satisfy their ambition. Should they rise in revolt at the time when the Emperor is changed the Government, supported by the loyal statesmen and officials, whose interests are bound up with the welfare of the imperial family and whose influence has spread far ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... multitude of human actions and by the crowd of delightful people who fill his four-hundred odd pages.... It deserves a high place among the novels that deal with American life. No recent American novel save one has sought to cover so broad a canvas, or has created so strong an impression of ambition and of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... courtiers suggested that he should collect in his harem all the beautiful virgins of the land, and choose him a wife. Among these was Hadassah, the adopted daughter of Mordecai. He urged her to enter her name among the rivals for kingly favor. It was not ambition merely that moved Mordecai. He had been meditating upon the unfolding providence of God toward his scattered nation, and felt that there was deeper meaning in passing events than the pleasures and anger of his sovereign. ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... it was, sank still lower. What miserable luck he had! His one great ambition, next to getting his diploma, had been to make the varsity ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... mental and physical agony inflicted by the disease, and the thought occurred to him that he was on the point of finding a sure and certain remedy, his benevolent heart overflowed with unselfish gladness. No feeling of personal ambition, no hope or desire of fame, sullied the purity of his noble philanthropy. 'While the vaccine discovery was progressive,' he writes, 'the joy at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities, blended with the fond hope of enjoying ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various |
