"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found first his hill and then founded his college, believing probably that any one ambitious enough to climb the hill was a man fit to wrestle with learning and, if need be, with Satan himself. Satan was ever before Hezekiah, and he fought him valiantly, exorcising him every morning in chapel and every evening at prayers. The first students of Sanford College learned Latin and Greek ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... approaching and bending over his shoulder, pour voir de ses yeux that such an action or event is represented or misrepresented (as the case may be) exactly as he wishes it. Thiers seems to have contemplated Napoleon's character till he has imbibed some of its nature. Surely he must be an ambitious man, and, if so, surely he will at this juncture ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... outlined upon the great canvas, while Robert's days were spent either in the luxurious library at the Hall, or in strolling about the country listening to tales of trouble, and returning like a tweed-suited ministering angel to carry Raffles Haw's help to the unfortunate. It was not an ambitious life, but it was one which was very congenial to his ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The Church, as a powerful institution, became ambitious to rule the state and the world. A spiritual despotism appeared, surrounding itself with earthly splendor, grasping the sword of earthly power, and the farthest removed from the humble and gentle spirit of its Master. It would tolerate no opposition to its will, in high places ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... brewer of Ghent, and deemed it contrary to the fitness of things that the chivalry of France should have been defied and worsted by mere mechanics and artisans. But there can be no doubt that Artevelde was a very great man. He may have been personally ambitious, but he was a true patriot. He had great military talents. He completely remodelled and wonderfully improved the internal administration of the country, and raised its commerce, manufactures, and agriculture to a pitch which they had never before reached. After his death ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... that he was certain he could tell the whole Story contained in the two first Volumes in a few Minutes; for Example, (continued he) There is a Family who live in the Country, consisting of an old, positive, gouty Gentleman, two old Batchelors as positive as their gouty Brother, a meek Wife, an ambitious Son, an envious elder Sister, and a handsome younger Sister; who, having refused many offered Matches, engages the Attention and Liking of one Mr. Lovelace, a young Gentleman of a noble Family; her ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... to be admitted as a competitor), he must of necessity be in constant communication with her for a space of two or three years to come; and particularly during the next few months. She, doubtless, cherished far too ambitious views of her career to feel any personal interest in this enforced relationship with him; but he would be at liberty to feel what he chose: and to be the victim of an unrequited passion, while afforded such splendid opportunities of communion with ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Doge here, who has the more ambitious tomb, is Niccolo Tron (1471-1473) who was before all a successful merchant. Foscari, it will be noticed, is clean shaven; Tron bearded; and to this beard belongs a story, for on losing a dearly loved son he refused ever after to have it cut and carried it to the grave as ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... discouragement. She found the right word, the right jest, the right spur to invention or effort; while all the time she was caressing and appeasing her companion's self-love—placing it like a hot-house plant in an atmosphere of expansion and content—with that art of hers, which, for the ambitious and irritable man, more conscious of the kicks than of the kisses of fortune, made conversation with her an active ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... questions or matters such 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
... effects on the younger children of their owners. It raises universally the standard of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry in motion. The manner of living in great landlords is that in which every one is ambitious of being able to indulge; and their habits of expense, though somewhat injurious to themselves, act as powerful incentives to the ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who never think their fortunes sufficiently ample unless they will enable them to emulate the splendour of the richest ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... other than the political are reflected in the letters. From them we can gather a picture of how an ambitious Roman gentleman of some inherited wealth took to the legal profession as the regular means of becoming a public figure; of how his fortune might be increased by fees, by legacies from friends, clients, and even complete strangers who thus sought to confer distinction on themselves; of how ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... companies from battalions of the militia from various counties, one company usually being formed from a battalion. These companies were organized into regiments, very much as at present, and like the old anti-bellum militia. At times some ambitious citizen would undertake to raise a volunteer company outside of those raised from battalions, and generally these were called "crack companies." Afterwards a few undertook to raise companies in this manner, i.e., selecting the officers first, and then proceeding to select the men, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... amusement of the company, and the perplexity and amazement of the more inexperienced, a sprinkling of persons called by the newspapers eccentric characters—individuals, namely, who, either from some real derangement of their understanding, or, much more frequently, from an excess of vanity, are ambitious of distinguishing themselves by some striking peculiarity in dress or address, conversation or manners, and perhaps in all. These affectations are usually adopted, like Drawcansir's extravagances, to show they dare; and I must needs say, those who profess them are ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... neither beautiful nor bright;—but he was a Conservative squire born of Tory parents. Nor was he rich;—having but a moderate income, sufficient to maintain a moderate country house and no more. When first there came indications that Sophia intended to put up with George Whitstable, the more ambitious sister did not spare the shafts of her scorn. And now she was told that George Whitstable would not speak to her future husband! She was not to marry Mr Brehgert lest she should bring disgrace, among others, upon George Whitstable! This was not to ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the voice of peace. Aided by science, and sanctified by religion, it should be the all-powerful stimulant to universal amity. The honest and honorable merchant is the natural antagonist of the factious politician, the ambitious statesman, the glory-seeking warrior. [Applause.] While the merchant is the most ardent of patriots, commerce is the unifier of nations, whereby is to be fulfilled the dream of poets and the vision of seers in the brotherhood of man, in a ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... reporter said: "He hesitated as if choked with emotion at the thought of losing his friends." Then with the majesty of greatness and magnetism of manner he proceeded, saying: "I am charged with being ambitious. If I had listened to the soft whisperings of ambition I would have stood still, gazed upon the raging storm and let the ship of state drift on with the winds. I seek no office at the cost of courage or conviction. ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... brothers of yours—most of them came to 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 ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... ever consider what it involved, this ruin of British agriculture? Don't you see that if we lose our power to feed ourselves we destroy the advantages of our insular position?"[775] "Don't you see that the people who depend on foreigners for their food are at the mercy of any ambitious statesman who chooses to make war upon them? And don't you think that is rather a stiff price to pay to get a farthing off the loaf? No nation can be secure unless it is independent; no nation can be independent unless it is based upon ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master [Michel Angelo]. To kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man."—Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1884, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... were run up fourteen feet, and by some mistake, half a foot higher, looking when finished so cold and cheerless and bare that the ambitious man ransacked New York and Boston and even sent to London for ornaments for his walls. Books were bought by the square yard, pictures by the wholesale, mirrors by the dozen, with bronzes and brackets and sconces ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... hospitable mansion which was making a heavy drain upon his already diminished resources. Here Burr, by his charm of manner and engaging conversation, soon won from the simple Irishman his heart and his remaining funds. He also made the island both a convenient rendezvous for his adherents in his ambitious schemes and a starting point for his own extended expeditions, which took him during the latter part of this year to Natchez, Nashville, St. Louis, Vincennes, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... Paul none did, none could? Those know, (Such as were blest to heare him) this is truth.[4] Did he confirm thy aged?[5] convert thy youth? Did he these wonders? And is this deare losse Mourn'd by so few? (few for so great a crosse.) But sure the silent are ambitious all To be Close Mourners at his Funerall; If not; In common pitty they forbare By repetitions to renew our care; Or, knowing, griefe conceiv'd, conceal'd, consumes Man irreparably, (as poyson'd fumes Doe waste the braine) make silence a safe way, To'inlarge the Soule from these walls, mud and ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... lovely ambitions for your friends. What about yourself? Won't you be a circus-rider, dear? I want you to be as ambitious for you as you ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... ideas in the old woman's head than had ever found room there before, when, after Annorah had gone, she sat down by herself before the fire. She was both ambitious and imaginative, and long vistas of future greatness opened before her, all commencing with the wonderful fact that her ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... the sixteenth century bears many points of resemblance to the great Arian heresy. Both schisms originated with Priests impatient of the yoke of the Gospel, fond of novelty and ambitious for notoriety. Both were nursed and sustained by the reigning Powers, and were augmented by large accessions of proselytes. Both spread for awhile with the irresistible force of a violent hurricane, till its fury was spent. Both subsequently became subdivided into various bodies. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... notice the tension. He was too happy. He was sick of soldiering. His old uniform was like a convict's stripes. He was childishly ambitious to get into long trousers again. For nearly half a year he had buttoned his breeches at the knee and housed his calves in puttees and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a sudden depression in the shoe trade which threw him out of work. More than most occupations the shoe business is liable to these sudden fluctuations and suspensions, and the most industrious and ambitious workman is often compelled to spend in his enforced weeks of idleness all that he had been able to save when employed, and thus at the end of the year finds himself, through no fault of his own, no better off ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of another highly ambitious and successful king of Hind, name Fur, who died and left a young son, inexperienced in war and in danger of losing his possessions. The wise men consulted together, and Sassa, the son of Dahir, brought the chess board and men to the Prince, saying, "Here you have an exact ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... the porch are all from the wild, and comprise a prickly ash, several plants of two wild osiers or dogwoods, a spice bush, rose, wild sunflowers and asters and golden-rods. The promontory at the left is a more ambitious but less effective mass. It contains an exochorda, a reed, variegated elder, sacaline, variegated dogwood, tansy, and a young tree of wild crab. At the rear of the plantation, next the house, one sees the pear tree. The best single part of the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... principle as witnessed in others. De Soto, intensely proud, was not at all disposed to play the sycophant before his patron. He had already exasperated him by his refusal to execute orders which he deemed dishonorable. And worst of all, by winning the love of Isabella, he had thwarted one of the most ambitious of Don Pedro's plans; he having contemplated her alliance with one of the most illustrious families ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... is to keep his heart; Each passion to control; Nobly ambitious well to rule The empire of ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... almost over, and Beth had been home a full month on that long four months' vacation that university students are privileged to enjoy. She was very ambitious when she came home that first vacation. She had conceived a fresh ideal of womanhood, a woman not only brilliantly educated and accomplished, but also a gentle queen of the home, one who thoroughly understood ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... "'She was ambitious for me and wished me to marry well. We had plenty of money, and as that opens most doors she managed to get introductions and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Seymour of Sudleye; Lord Parr was to be Marquis of Northampton; Lord Wriothesley, the chancellor, Earl of Southampton; and Viscount Lisle was to be Earl of Warwick. The Duke of Somerset was the young king's uncle, and the real power was at once in his hands. But if he was ambitious, it was only—as he persuaded ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the true search of the matter consists in destroying matter by the form; and the triumph of art is great in proportion as it overcomes matter and maintains its sway over those who enjoy its work. It is great particularly in destroying matter when most imposing, ambitious, and attractive, when therefore matter has most power to produce the effect proper to it, or, again, when it leads those who consider it more closely to enter directly into relation with it. The mind of the spectator and of the hearer must remain perfectly free and intact; it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... as headquarters for any one who desires to explore the neighbouring country. One of my first expeditions was to Sinia, a small bath-place in the Tomoescher Pass, just over the borders—in fact in Roumania. Here Prince Charles has a charming chateau, and there are besides several ambitious Swiss cottages belonging to the wealthy grandees of Roumania. My object was not so much to see the little place, as it was to explore this pass of the Carpathians, now so familiar to newspaper correspondents and others ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... that King Haco ruled over Norway, Alexander, the son of William King of Scotland, was then King of Scotland. He was a great Prince, and very ambitious of this world's praise. He sent, from Scotland in the Western sea, two Bishops to King Haco. At first they begged to know if King Haco would give up those territories in the Hebrides,[1] which King Magnus Bare-foot had unjustly wrested from Malcolm, ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson
... "You will find, my ambitious young friend," he said, "that it is better in the long run to rest occasionally. Nature requires it, and, as you yourself have said, Nature is ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... know just how to explain it. Lily had begged him that afternoon to bring his little sister down. To tell the truth she was very ambitious to know the Underhills. They must be somebody, for they kept horses and a ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and very elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself. The average of public taste in art is low enough, but in refusing his "high art" pictures, and buying his domestic ones, the public was not far wrong. It must be confessed ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and nearly ready for its occupants; Bill, Sarah and the baby had been installed for some time in a neat little two-roomed place with a side verandah, a short distance from the main building. Home-made furniture, even more ambitious than the first built, had been erected, and a fresh supply of household goods bought during an exciting week in Melbourne, where Mr. Linton had taken them all—all, that is, but Bob, who had steadfastly declined to go away and play when other people ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... no joke, according to Mr. J. H. Vail, formerly one of the Menlo Park staff. "I wanted a job," he said, "and was ambitious to take charge of the dynamo-room. Mr. Edison led me to a heap of junk in a corner and said: 'Put that together and let me know when it's running.' I didn't know what it was, but received a liberal education in finding out. It proved to be a dynamo, which I finally ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... death as they lay asleep by the Jaloff horses; others were killed in attempting to make their escape; and a still greater number were taken prisoners. Among the latter was Abdulkader himself. This ambitious or rather frantic prince, who but a month before had sent the threatening message to Damel, was now himself led into his presence a miserable captive. The behaviour of Damel on this occasion is never ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and her sisters. The whole of the altar in this inner church belongs to Luini. Were it not for darkness and decay, we should pronounce this series of the Passion in nine great compositions, with saints and martyrs and torch-bearing genii, to be one of his most ambitious and successful efforts. As it is, we can but judge in part; the adolescent beauty of Sebastian, the grave compassion of St. Rocco, the classical perfection of the cupid with lighted tapers, the gracious majesty of women smiling ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Jefferson called the attention of Congress to this retrocession. He anticipated the French designs. He justly feared that Napoleon Bonaparte would seek to renew the old colonial glories of France, and the warlike genius and ambitious spirit of the "First Consul" augmented this fear. Word came in November, 1802, of an expedition being fitted out under French command to take possession of Louisiana, all protests of our Minister to the transfer ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... Being ambitious to get ahead socially and financially, he was very careful of whom or with whom he talked. He was as much afraid of expressing a rabid or unpopular political or social opinion as he was of being seen with an evil character, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... men, on the other hand, and all the other public authorities in the various Grecian states, sent compliments, congratulations, and presents to Philip, each seeming ambitious to contribute his share to the splendor of the celebration. They were not wholly disinterested in this, it is true. As Philip had been made commander-in-chief of the Grecian armies which were about to undertake the conquest ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... negociations which took place, that the greatest obstacle was the determination of Napoleon to obtain Sicily for his brother Joseph, in addition to Naples. Fox, however, had sufficient penetration to discover that he had other ambitious demands to be satisfied, should this be complied with—that he would demand Holland for his brother Louis, etc.; and therefore he determined to break off the negociations, and to continue the war. He made this determination fully known, when ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... intellectual ambitions of the professional woman may deter her from the exercise of her reproductive functions. Thus the egoistic and individualistic tendencies which modern social organization fosters in the personality of its feminine members makes them unwilling to sacrifice their ambitious plans in the performance of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... ambitious woman's soul—a woman who believed that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead the utter despair of one who has chosen the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... some men whose party affiliations are based upon 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 may be gratified. After the consummation of the events above referred to, the conviction ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... certain ambitious and unscrupulous youngster was feeling his way to a position where he might make himself recognized. It was the youthful violinist, Jean Baptiste Lulli, the illegitimate son of a Florentine gentleman, his dates being ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... opposite of what was feared: for, as months passed, the Boodah, planted there in the ocean, rapidly became the recognized gathering-point of the fashion and gaiety of Europe, thither flocking the socially ambitious and the "arrived" together, and to have been invited to those revels of taste and elegance became a superiority. Gradually, as the names "Beech", "Ecuador", ceased to be associated with the islands, the name of Hogarth took their place; and Hogarth ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... noble or ecclesiastic sometimes embraced a vast category of persons; and if we would learn on what an elaborate scale housekeeping might be conducted by subjects, we cannot do better than turn to Gascoigne's account of Cardinal Wolsey's colossal retinue. After stating that the ambitious churchman had in attendance upon him "men of great possessions and for his guard the tallest yeomen in ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... are angels from Heaven watching over them, David, guiding them, showing them how. I believe good white angels are guiding every true minister,—not the bad ones— Oh, I know a lot about ministers, honey,—proud, ambitious, selfish, vainglorious, hypocritical, even amorous, a lot of them,—but there are others, true ones,—you, David, and some more. They just have to grow together until harvest, and then the false ones will be dug up and dumped in ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... our situation is not in our own choice: our conduct in that situation is all that is in our own option. The substance of the question is, to put bounds to your own power by the rules and principles of law. This is, I am sensible, a difficult thing to the corrupt, grasping, and ambitious part of human nature. But the very difficulty argues and enforces the necessity of it. First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. Since the Revolution, at least, the power of the nation has ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... required number of votes and would have been elected. The Democrats stood ready to give their solid vote to any one of the Independents whenever it could be shown that their votes would result in an election. But it so happened that Chandler and Armstead were both ambitious to be Speaker and neither would give way for the other, which, of course, made the election of either impossible. The one vote cast for Howe was no doubt Mr. Armstead's vote, while the one vote for Armstead was no doubt ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... be flattered. The Jesuits have wished to be loved by the great. They have all been worthy to be abandoned to the spirit of lying, the one party to deceive, the others to be deceived. They have been avaricious, ambitious, voluptuous. Coacervabunt tibi magistros.[377] Worthy disciples of such masters, they have sought flatterers, and have ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... enabled him to give himself into the hands of a Bond Street tailor, but a careful study of cut and material, as spread before the eye in elegant coloured illustrations in the windows of respectable shops in less ambitious quarters, had resulted in the purchase of a well-made suit of smart English cut. He had a nice young figure, and looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, so much so, indeed, that several persons glanced ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said, almost fiercely. "Why do you say that? Why should he not be ambitious?" He stopped and laid his hand on Howard's shoulder, gripping it tightly, and his voice sank to a stern whisper. "You don't know of anything—there ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 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, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... said the veteran, for she offered first in the circle, "this is my friend, Captain Borroughcliffe: he has long been ambitious of this honor, and I have no doubt his reception will be such as to leave him no cause to repent he has ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... performances in an old barn in Queen-street, which is now used as a warehouse by Messrs W. Laycock & Sons, curriers. After a short course of training in the society, Arthur Bland, John Spencer, and myself became rather—ambitious I suppose I shall have to call it—and joined the profession altogether. I should be about sixteen years old; and I was about the youngest member in the company. My companions and I joined Wild's Travelling Dramatic company. I was called the "juvenile," owing to the fact that I was the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Belvidera, and Calista, and Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they less liked than Imogen, or than Juliet, or than Desdemona? Are they not spoken of and remembered in the same way? Is not the female performer as great (as they call it) in one as in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of shining, in every drawling tragedy that his wretched day produced,—the productions of the Hills, and the Murphys, and the Browns,—and shall he have that honor to dwell in our minds forever as an inseparable concomitant with Shakspeare? A kindred mind! ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... there. He lived in the East, leaving the affairs of the place entirely in the hands of a manager named Gilbert Steele. It was a common saying in that part of the country that "Gil Steele was as hard as his name." He was an ambitious and an active man, and regarded every dollar wrung out of the ranch for its owner as a ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... those alone who were uninstructed in any useful occupation, but there were also the turbulent, dissatisfied spirits; builders of barricades, and leaders of club-sections, whom the late excitement, and their temporary elevation above their fellow workmen, had left restless and ambitious, and whose awakened energies, if not directed to some useful and congenial employment, would ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... considering how little assurance can ordinarily be placed in the sea, and how hazardous it is to expose oneself and one's goods to its mercy, has remarked, with much reason, that it is infinitely preferable to be poor on shore than to be rich at sea. In which saying he mocks indeed at those ambitious, avaricious, and mercenary men who, in order to gain false glory and the things of this world, expose themselves rashly to the manifest perils which are most of the time the inevitable lot of the seaman. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... you get that kind of a notion? 2. She is an eager and an ambitious girl. 3. He received the degree of a Master of Arts. 4. The boy and girl came yesterday. 5. Neither the man nor woman was here. 6. He was accompanied by a large and small man. 7. He planted an oak, maple and ash. 8. ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... right, about the means of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants; by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate; by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it; and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... has distinguished us from the beasts and made us a paradise to gain, and for this given us reason, which is a rudder to steer us against tempests and our ambitious desires, and there is a means of easing the imaginations of one's brain by fasting, excessive labours, and other virtues; and instead of frisking and fretting like a child let loose from school, you should pray to the virgin, sleep on a hard board, attend to your ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... senator of Rome. This honour was long the highest object of ambition, and so it seemed to Jacobus Pizinga, an illustrious Sicilian magistrate. Then came the Italian journey of Charles IV, whom it amused to flatter the vanity of ambitious men, and impress the ignorant multitude by means of gorgeous ceremonies. Start- ing from the fiction that the coronation of poets was a prerogative of the old Roman emperors, and consequently was no less his own, he crowned (May 15, 1355) the Florentine scholar, Zanobi della Strada, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... scene enacted in the House of Commons on that memorable night is thus described: "In the following month the Chancellor of the Exchequer produced his second budget. It was an ambitious and a skillful attempt to reconcile conflicting interests, and to please all while offending none. The government had come into office pledged to do something for the relief of the agricultural interests. They redeemed their pledge by reducing the duty on malt. This reduction created ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... and a girl. They were Mr. Ernest Churchouse, of 'The Magnolias,' with his widowed housekeeper, Mary Dinnett, and her daughter, Sabina. The girl was nineteen, dark and handsome, and very skilled in her labour. None disputed her right to be called first spinner at the mills. She was an impulsive, ambitious maiden, and Mr. Best, foreman at the works, claimed for her that she brought genius as well as understanding to her task. Sabina joined her friend, Nancy Buckler; Mrs. Dinnett, who had been a mill hand in her youth, took a seat beside ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... is a happy woman. She has found something to love and something to do. These were all she needed to make her supremely self-respectful, happy, and, in the best degree, womanly. Willful, ambitious, sacrificing her young affections to gold at the first, and wasting years in idleness and unworthy intrigue, for the lack of affection and the absence of motive to usefulness and industry, she has found, at last, the secret of her woman's life, and has accepted it with genuine gratitude. In ministering ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... not. Bolivar is a great man, a remarkable man; but he is ambitious, and will brook no rival. Now, suppose I remain. It will be difficult to avoid strife, and the country will be plunged back into its old condition of slavery. Do you think that San Martin will give a day of delight to the common enemy? No, my friend; if only Peru ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... aside his black coat, did more real work than anyone. Then mother came into the field with Cicely in her arms, and was welcomed with acclamations, and forthwith seated on a royal throne of hay; then, under her watchful eyes, the ambitious Ambrose worked feverishly, and threw his arms and legs about like an excited spider. Then Nancy laughed at him, and David pushed him down, and Pennie covered him with hay; and it got into his eyes and down his throat and he choked and kicked, ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... the person of the last Sir Ferdinand Armine, one of those extraordinary and rarely gifted beings who require only an opportunity to influence the fortunes of their nation, and to figure as a Caesar or an Alcibiades. Beautiful, brilliant, and ambitious, the young and restless Armine quitted, in his eighteenth year, the house of his fathers, and his stepdame of a country, and entered the Imperial service. His blood and creed gained him a flattering ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 of the way of the horses) ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... ambitious and most interesting excursion into the Esterel that can be made in a day's walk is to go to Saint-Raphael from Agay by way of Mont Vinaigre. You must make an early start and be ready to put in from five to six hours if you want to eat your lunch ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... which was one of the roomiest on the Islands. He only knew that it had been built for one of his forefathers, and that this forgotten Tregarthen, or the Lord Proprietor who had chosen him for tenant, must have held ambitious views of the amount of farming possible on Saaron. So much might be guessed from the size and extent of the out-buildings. The "chall" or byre, for instance, had stalls for no less than twelve cows, whereas to-day all the Island's ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... would probably promote marriage of able and ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even recognize love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion of being, that many men ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... if you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... year, and everybody is in better humor having discharged his accumulation of grudges and animosities. I have heard closer speech, more sententious, more convincing and in more direct and forcible language in town meeting than from any other forum. Men are not so much ambitious of eloquence as they are to carry their point. There is often more fun, wit and sarcasm as well as logic than goes with more pretentious and popular rostrums. When the town-meeting is abolished freedom will have lost her humble but most powerful ally. When the town grows to a city all ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... love hovers with purest wings, About the temple of the proudest frame, Where blaze those lights, fairest of earthly things, Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame. My ambitious thoughts, confined in her face, Affect no honour but what she can give; My hopes do rest in limits of her grace; I weigh no comfort unless she relieve. For she, that can my heart imparadise, Holds in her fairest hand what dearest is; My Fortune's wheel 's the circle of her eyes, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Nagorno-Karabakh and the breakup of the centrally directed economic system of the former Soviet Union contributed to a severe economic decline in the early 1990s. By 1994, however, the Armenian Government had launched an ambitious IMF-sponsored economic program that has resulted in positive growth rates in 1995-2000. Armenia also managed to slash inflation and to privatize most small- and medium-sized enterprises. The chronic energy shortages Armenia suffered ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... would," continued Captain Sybil. "I did not think that their leaders would permit it. I believe the rank and file of their army are largely composed of a mass of ignorance, led, manipulated, and moulded by educated and ambitious wickedness. In attempting to overthrow the Union, a despotism and reign of terror were created which encompassed them as fetters of iron, and they will not accept the conditions until they have reached the last extremity. I hardly think they are yet willing ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... feet are inferior, while those done by carrying loads are the lowest. If the king is clever in the transaction of business and restrains his senses, his kingdom endures. Manu himself has said that it is with the aid of the intelligence that an ambitious person succeeds in achieving victories. In this world, O Yudhishthira, they who listen to wise counsels that are not generally known, that are, O sinless one, possessed of allies, and that act after proper scrutiny, succeed in achieving all their objects. A person possessed of such ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was not long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself in desperation to a wealthy old maid, and met with a second refusal. Thus failed the ambitious schemes with which he had started. He had lost his hope of a marriage with Mlle. d'Esgrignon, which would have opened the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the province to him; and after the second rejection, his credit fell away to such an extent ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... and I remained for a long time thinking over all that Ideala had said, and also thinking of her as she looked at the time; and the subject was so inspiring that, although my strong point is landscape, in an ambitious mood I began to paint an allegorical picture of her as a mother nursing the Infant Goodness of the race. She saw it when it was nearly finished, but did not recognise herself, and exclaimed; "What a gaunt creature! and that baby weighs ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... conclusion. The idea that returned the oftenest was that Miss Crawford, after proving herself cooled and staggered by a return to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end too much attached to him to give him up. She would try to be more ambitious than her heart would allow. She would hesitate, she would tease, she would condition, she would require a great deal, but she would ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "Bells and Pomegranates": and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that I only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious, thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose, that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... what a soother! If Montfort were but less prosperous or more ambitious, what a treasure, either to console or to sustain, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seen marching over their bleeding corses, joining with all their, and formerly his, enemies, to overwhelm the country of his birth, and thereby lay that of his adoption at the mercy of the first czar who should be ambitious of reigning ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Gros Colman are the two best late black grapes, especially for those who are ambitious to grow clusters of large size with large berries. Both are very good in quality. Neither of the two is particularly easy to grow, since they require a long time to ripen; but, to offset this, both keep longer than any other sorts after ripening. Because ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age a few years senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he was less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much less popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate private fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was unmarried, not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... death by all men, by reason of his works and of the good name that he leaves to those who survive him. And in truth one who spends his time in this manner, lives in quiet contemplation and without being molested by those ambitious desires which are almost always seen, to their shame and loss, in the idle and unoccupied, who are for the most part ignorant. And even if it comes about that our virtuous man is sometimes smitten by the malign, so powerful is the force of virtue ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... 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
... he first experienced the fatigues and hardships incident to the life of the soldier in the long march over the arid plains and through the mountain canyons into the Mormon territory. The prospect of inaction, with a long period in garrison, proved a disappointment to so ambitious a spirit, and he resigned his commission and returned to the domestic welcome of ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... empire must have been deeply felt by Justinian; but the jealousy excited by the renown, which conferred the option of accepting such power, gradually effaced the impression of that merit in the breasts both of the feeble emperor, and of his energetic and ambitious consort, Theodora. Though Belisarius loved money and splendour, and had more of Pompey than Caesar in his character, still the boldest cabinet minister must have felt that lie could no longer safely be entrusted with the whole military power of the empire. Though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... you are too ambitious, and that you have not sufficient knowledge of life or character to venture on so comprehensive an attempt. Evidences of inexperience in every way, and of your power being far below the situations that you imagine, present themselves to me in almost ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... however, not content with this. They must form churches. But a church implies in every case an unnatural and therefore dangerous growth, caused by the union either of inferior minds (attracted by eloquence, but unable to think) with those that are not on the same plane, or of ambitious zealots with reluctant conservatists. Many join the church who are not qualified to appreciate the leader's work. They overload the founder's deism with the sectarian theism from which they have not really freed themselves. On the other hand, younger men, who have been ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... discussion about careers and their relative merits. One rather cynical man had broken in upon the ambitious projects that were being advanced with, "Well, we must remember that we are after all only ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the fifth century the Huns had a famous king named Attila. He was only twenty-one years old when he became their king. But although he was young, he was very brave and ambitious, and he wanted to be ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... had expected. He said this without bitterness, and said it not to the world, but only to a friend. I am exceedingly sorry for him; it is such a changed life that he must lead hereafter, and with none of the objects before him which he might heretofore have hoped to grasp. No doubt he was ambitious of civic, and even of broader public distinction; and not unreasonably so, having the gift of ready and impressive speech, and a behavior among men that wins them, and a tact in the management of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... unprecedented even in those days of military license. Merit was rewarded with princely munificence, and the highest offices were within the reach of every common soldier who distinguished himself;—trivial breaches of discipline were punished with death. The dark and ambitious spirit of Wallenstein would not allow him to rest satisfied with the rewards and dignities heaped upon him by his imperial master. He temporised and entered into negotiations with the enemy; and during an interview with ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... moreover chose to live in Ireland, and their revenues were merely drawn away to England, the estates were after awhile very properly declared forfeited, and went to the Crown. Thus the one who of all the adventurers had cherished the largest and most ambitious hopes in the end left no enduring mark at all ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... lower than the retail prices. Frequently, realizing that they could get still more advantageous terms for larger orders, the Granges established a county agency which took over the work of several local agents. Sometimes the Patrons even embarked upon the more ambitious enterprise of cooperative stores. ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... out. A combination of existing lines afforded a route to the city of Santa Clara. From these eastward, the Cuba Company, commonly known as the Van Home road, completed a through line in 1902. In its beginning, it was a highly ambitious scheme, involving the building of many towns along the way, the erection of many sugar mills, and the creation of a commercial city, at Nipe Bay, that would leave Havana in the back-number class. All that called for a sum of money not then and not now available. But the "spinal railroad" ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... new obstacle to his suit had presented itself, in the person of a rival, upon whom the object of his ambitious wishes appeared to bestow unusual favor. This individual was a young officer in the army, a sort of protege of the lady's father, who had been spending a furlough at Bellevue. In the matter of fortune Maxwell's rival was not to be dreaded, for he knew the lady was not mercenary in ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... as in the city, it is remarkable what a fascinating influence players exercise over young fellows who are ambitious to be regarded as the knowing ones regarding everything appertaining to the playhouse. How glibly the beardlings of the twenties or thereabouts will use the names of actors with whom perhaps they have never exchanged a word, in the silly belief they are raising themselves in the estimation ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... chamber, and prepare your lute. [exit Page. Happy Castalio! now, by my great soul, My ambitious soul, that languishes to glory, I'll have her yet; by my best hopes, I will; She shall be mine, in spite of all her arts. But for Castalio, why was I refus'd? Has he supplanted me by some foul play? Traduc'd my honour? death! he durst not do't. It must be so: we parted, and he met her, Half to ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... Smith and the Mansion House 'bus-driver. He never used the word "beauty" except in reference to a setter dog—beauty of words or music, of faith or rebellion, did not exist for him. He rather fancied large, ambitious, banal, red-and-gold sunsets, but he merely glanced at them as he straggled home, and remarked that they were "nice." He believed that all Parisians, artists, millionaires, and socialists were immoral. His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... had so nearly won the Sheriff's prize, had often in these days envious thoughts for the outlaws in their free life. Anything was better, to his mind, than oak-bark and ditch-water and the smell of half-tanned hides. Also he was ambitious to beat Robin at his own game. By dint of perseverance Arthur had once come very nigh to emulating that masterly feat of archery by which Robin had wrested the purse of gold and the Arab horse from him. Vastly ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... fourth brother—who was to devote himself to new inventions. In one of his ambitious attempts he fell, and broke his neck; but he had a splendid funeral, with a procession, and flags, and music. He was noticed in the newspapers, and three funeral orations were pronounced over him, the one ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... disquiet at the pile of Ferrier's letters lying beside him. It contained material for which any ambitious journalist, at the present juncture, would give the eyes out of his head. But could Barrington be trusted? Oliver vaguely remembered some stories to his disadvantage, told probably by Lankester, who in these respects was one of the most scrupulous of men. Yet the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honest people, so called, blame poor Dorcas for her fidelity in a bad cause. For does not the general, who implicitly serves an ambitious prince in his unjust designs upon his neighbours, or upon his own oppressed subjects; and even the lawyer, who, for the sake of a paltry fee, undertakes to whiten a black cause, and to defend it against one he knows to be good, do the very same thing as Dorcas? And ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson |
