"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a fight of men, not of children; not one of your European wars of paltry ambition, but a war of principle!' cried Cora, with that intensity of enthusiasm that has shed so much blood in the break-up ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of release, Whose cool hand stills the fever in the veins, And all the tumult of life's crowding cares— Ambition, envy, love and fear and hate, Hope's eager prophecies fulfilled too late, And fierce desires, and sorrows, and despairs— Thou wav'st thy mystic wand, and there remain Sleep and forgetfulness, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... has exhibited a commendable ambition in his efforts to acquire a knowledge of music, devoting several hours each day to practice ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... standpoint, the present building was comparatively recent. A thirty years' growth of ivy was scarcely able to atone for the unencrusted newness of the stones beneath. There was none of that narcotic suggestion of grey antiquity which in Oxford or Cambridge rebukes and stills a personal ambition. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... and my ambition is the Victoria Cross, and I'll get that too before I'm done; you see if I don't! It's the ambition of my life, Peg. I lie awake and think of that little iron cross; I go to sleep and dream of it, and see the two words dancing before my eyes in letters ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... of Rome, Clovis, then chief of the Franks, conceived the ambition of erecting a kingdom upon the ruins of the Roman power. He attacked Syagrius, the Roman governor of Gaul, and at Soissons gained a decisive victory over his forces (A.D. 486). Thus was destroyed forever ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Napoleon's escape and landing was received by the gallant —th with a fiery delight and enthusiasm, which everybody can understand who knows that famous corps. From the colonel to the smallest drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and ambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor as for a personal kindness in coming to disturb the peace of Europe. Now was the time the —th had so long panted for, to show their comrades in arms that they could fight as well as the Peninsular veterans, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men from the substantial gates of the true hell. Whatever is a cause of insubordinate and discordant fruition in body or soul, individual or community, is a real gate of hell. All the moral and social evils, intemperance, war, ambition, avarice, the extremes of poverty and wealth, ignorance, bad example, despotism, disease, every form of vice or crime, all the influences that destroy or mar human virtue, excellence, and harmony, are so many open gates of hell, drawing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... him that he had heard that it was intended for a Temple of Glory. "That's what people think, I know," said Napoleon; "but I mean it for a memorial in expiation of the murder of Louis XVI." He said to Metternich: "When I was young I favored the Revolution out of ignorance and ambition. When I came to the age of reason I followed its counsels and my own instinct, and crushed the Revolution." At another time he said: "The French throne was empty. Louis XVI. had not been able to hold it. If I had been in his place, in spite of the immense progress it had made in men's minds ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... He who thought never to have a wife grew to know what the joy of it must be. He perceived all the subtle rapture of wedded souls. He learned what the love of children was, the pride of home, the unselfish ambition for success that spurs men on. All the emotions passed in procession at night before him, tricked ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... It is very odd that fine towns always are approached by dirty suburbs; a covert symbolical satire, perhaps, on the ways to success in fine towns. Avarice or ambition go through very mean little streets before they gain the place which they jostle the crowd to win,—in the Townhall or on 'Change. Happy the man who, like you, Tom, finds that there is a shorter and a cleaner ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there silent for some few minutes hardly conscious that he was not alone, as he saw all his joys disappearing from before his mind's eye, one by one; his family pride, the pleasant high-toned duties of his station, his promised seat in Parliament and prosperous ambition, the full respect of all the world around him, his wealth and pride of place—for let no man be credited who boasts that he can part with these without regret. All these were gone. But there were losses more bitter than these. How could he think of his affianced ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... men of talent and ambition at the present day is the railroad service. The pay is large in many instances, while the service is continuous and honorable. Most of our railroad men began life on the farm. Of this class is the author of the accompanying books ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... motive' but interst'; acknowledged no criterion' but success'; he worshiped no God' but ambition'; and with an eastern devotion', he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry'. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed' that he did not profess'; there was no opinion' that he did not promulgate': in the ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... doubt, because Atticus was in Rome a great deal during these years. We take up the correspondence, therefore, after an interval of two years, which in many respects were the most important in Cicero's life. In B.C. 64 he attained his chief ambition by being elected to the consulship, but we have little trace of his public actions that year, only the fragments of one speech remaining, in defence of Q. Gallius on a charge of ambitus. The animus of the popular party, however, is shewn by the prosecution of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... became a slow and learned game. The monarchies were united not only by a natural community of interests, but by family alliances. A marriage contract sometimes became the signal for an interminable war, whilst family connections often set a barrier to ambition. After the wars of religion came to an end in 1648, the only wars were those which were waged for an inheritance or a dependency, or against countries whose system of government exempted them from the common law of dynastic States, and made ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... 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 ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the ruler, in alliance with him, of my race in Saint Domingo—were brothers in soul, as we were apparently in duty and in fortune. Brothers in soul we were not, as it has been the heaviest grief of my life to learn. I spurn brotherhood of soul with one whose ambition has been for himself. Brothers in duty we were; and, if we should yet be brothers in fortune—if he should fall into the hands of a strong foe— But you are saying in your heart, 'No foreboding! ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... house, and supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order in compliance with the instincts of those below them. Lady Laura's father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura's infinite delight. It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... exclaiming 'By Jupiter here it is at last!' There were other times when, being equally depressed, he would be seen to shake his head, and give up hope. To see him at those periods leaning on a chimneypiece, like as on an urn containing the ashes of his ambition, with the cheek that would not sprout, upon the hand on which that cheek had forced conviction, was a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... attention; and he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else, cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth—a certain extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the forlorn hope—has participated therein: that which in the end always prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who prefer to put their last trust ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... drove the Count and his soldiers against this wall of steel. At the approach of the peasants, the cities that were unable to resist them opened their gates and joined them. Wherever they appeared they pulled down the images and broke the crucifixes. Many nobles, some through fear and others from ambition, joined them. ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... existed the capacities of a great man, perfect health, wonderful energy, struggling aspirations toward the right—which he might hereafter have reached—generous impulses running wild, strong affections, and overweaning ambition, all turbulent ostentations almost barbaric, and all hurled into nothingness by the blow of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... fixed. This true plot, in turn, can be expressed in yet more general terms, often as the primal truth which the story illustrates; this may be called the "theme" of the story. Thus in "The Ambitious Guest," the theme is "The futility of abstracted ambition;" or, in its most general terms, "The irony of fate." The true ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... and it is pathetic, but Charlotte's supreme ambition at that time was to keep a school, a school of her own, like her friend Miss Wooler. There was a great innocence and humility in Charlotte. She was easily taken in by any of those veiled, inimical spectres of ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... officers—Mr Vans Agnew, of the Civil Service, and Lieutenant Anderson, of the 1st Bombay European Fusiliers—and a considerable body of troops. Moolraj, however, had no intention of losing his government, and either prompted by his own ambition, or instigated by evil counsellors, he resolved to rebel. By bribes he won over the native troops who had accompanied the commissioners, and whom, there can be little doubt, he instigated his followers to murder. Both Mr Agnew and Lieutenant ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... look at to warn themselves what they would come to.... Poor mother ... and poor me.... But mother's getting better now she's being analysed. That wouldn't help me at all. I analyse myself too much already.... And I was so happy a few months ago. What a dreadful end to a good ambition. I shall never work again, I suppose, in any way that counts. So that's that.... Why do I want to work and to do something? Other wives and mothers don't.... Or do they, only they don't know it, because they don't analyse? I believe they do, lots of them. Or is it ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... respected in his native town of Orthez, when all at once he was tempted by the thought of titular rank, and from that time his life was one long misery. He took the name of one of his estates, he bought his title in Italy, and ordered his coat-of-arms from a heraldic agent in Paris, and now his ambition was to be treated as a real nobleman. The mere fact of dining with the eccentric Duke de Champdoce, who never invited any one to his table, was to him, as it were, a real patent ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... indeed real and earnest. To have introduced something unscientific into that compendium of science—there's triumph enough for any ambition. Besides, see ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the hands of the emperor, and were dragged as captives from town to town. But in the moment of his apparent triumph, the emperor was smitten with defeat. He saw the prey wrested from his grasp, and he was forced at last to grant toleration to the doctrines which it had been the ambition of his life to destroy. He had staked his kingdom, his treasures, and life itself, upon the crushing out of the heresy. Now he saw his armies wasted by battle, his treasuries drained, his many kingdoms threatened by revolt, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... yashiki on pretext she entered the shop of a tradesman. To her delight she learned that the Waka Dono, Aoyama Shu[u]zen, as yet had no wife. She had a hundred yards to go, and her purpose and ambition had expanded widely in that short distance. Her application for an interview with his lordship was quickly granted. She had often been subject of talk and comment between Shu[u]zen and his subordinate officer. The do[u]shin happened ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the vices opposed to magnanimity; and in the first place, those that are opposed thereto by excess. These are three, namely, presumption, ambition, and vainglory. Secondly, we shall consider pusillanimity which is opposed to it by way of deficiency. Under the first head there ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not the case with the next pioneer in the same field, although he deserves great credit also. Peter Petersen Syv (1631-1702) was a very able philologist, who was also a minor poet of ambition. In 1695 he reprinted and edited Vedel's text, adding 100 more kjaempeviser which had been unknown to Vedel. But his work was not so well done; Syv was something of a pedant, and unfortunately either too critical or not critical enough. He ventured to ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... anxiety to exaggerate the importance of the station in which they are placed; a cook, for example, has the most exalted idea of the art of cookery, and wishes to impress everyone with the same idea of its high importance, and all his ambition is to be considered a cook of the first-rate talent. In England it is different, one of the great objects with a tradesman is the hope, that by making his fortune he shall be enabled to get out of his class and take a higher walk in society. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... and Dick told Murphy he feared Ned would not be up to the mark at the election; but Murphy, with a better knowledge of human nature, and the excitement of such a cause, said, "Never fear him—ambition is a long spur, my boy, and will stir the blood of a thicker-skinned fellow than your brother-in-law. When he comes to stand up and assert his claims before the world, he'll ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... staid and regular farmer, the shooting of the corn in the still nights, as it swells with a respiring movement, distending the contracted sheaves which enclose it. In addition to this antipathy to the pursuits of his ancestors, Mark had a decided desire, a restless ambition, prompting him to see, and seek, and mingle with the world. He was fond, as our readers may have observed already, of his own eloquence, and having worn out the patience and forfeited the attention of all auditors at home, he was compelled, in order to the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... your ruin!' You would not listen to me, and now the ruin has come. To play a part in politics you must have money: have we any? What! would you burn your sign, which cost six hundred francs, and renounce 'The Queen of Roses,' your true glory? Leave ambition to others. He who puts his hand in the fire gets burned,—isn't that true? Politics burn in these days. We have one hundred good thousand francs invested outside of our business, our productions, our merchandise. If you want to increase your fortune, do as they did ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... few words to say about our voyage; for I find it necessary to repress the ambition of some of my passengers," continued the captain. "Some of them wish to visit all the Philippine Islands, and there are about ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... minister to self-gratulation, but contentedly fills the lowly sphere, and 'the humblest duties on herself doth lay.' We need not pause to point out that such an ideal is dead against the fashionable maxims of this generation. Personal ambition is glorified as an element in progress, and to a world which believes in such a proverb as 'devil take the hindmost,' these two exhortations can only seem fanatical absurdity. And yet, perhaps, if we fairly take into account how the seeking after personal advancement and conspicuous ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... exceedingly anxious to imitate Lumley, who was unfortunately a great smoker; but Spooner, like myself, had been born with a dislike to smoke—especially tobacco smoke—and a liability to become sick when he indulged in the pipe. Hence, whilst foolish ambition induced him to smoke, outraged nature protested; and between the two the poor fellow had a bad time of it. He had a good deal of determination ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... out their positions, or husband their powers. They act because they are impelled: often in defiance of all prudent considerations! yet commonly with an amazing success. Thus General Booth has said that he was driven by "the impulses and urgings of an undying ambition" to save souls. What was this impulse and urge? It was the instinctive energy of a great nature in a sublimated form. The level at which this enhanced power is experienced will determine its value for life; but its character is much the same in the convert at ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... the flesh and the devil" but renunciation of same and the bringing of the Impersonal Ideal into his everyday life would lead him to it, then Maya will have fulfilled its purpose—which is to show man his divinity. "Kill out the desire for life. Kill out Ambition. Kill out desire for comfort; yet work as those who love life. Respect life as those who are ambitious. Be happy as those are who ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... act with severity even when severity was necessary. The very criminals condemned to death ran a good chance of reprieve when he had to sign their death-warrants. He had also that worst of faults (so called), in one fitted by nature to become great—want of ambition, a failing that in such a man marks him the possessor of an even and a philosophic mind. It was no seeking of his own that raised him out of obscurity, and when his work was done to comparative obscurity he elected to return, though whether a man of his ability and experience in South African ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... why socialism has never had any great hold in England is because equality is only a word, and in no sense a real sentiment in England. The reason why members of the lowest class in England are not as a rule convinced socialists is because their one ambition is to become members of the middle-class, and to have property of their own; and while the sense of personal possession is so strong as it is, no socialism worthy of the name has a chance. It is possible ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 received my 'Prison ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Rapids, furnishes a brilliant example of this vocational directing. Mr. Davis begins his work through the theme writing and oral composition of the seventh and eighth grades. The purpose of the pupils' reading and discussion is to arouse their vocational ambition and to lead them to appreciate the value of further education and training for life. This study upon the part of the pupil is supplemented by talks given by Mr. Davis, prominent business and professional men and high school boys who have come back to finish their education after a few years ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... blockaded in Metz with the army, bound hand and foot, making no effort to break the wall of adamant that surrounded him; the doubtful relations that existed between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his indecision and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed upon himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences, and the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with Bismarck, King William and the Empress-regent, who in the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... He understood,—no one better than he,—the tendency of all his family to an uprising in the world, which tendency was almost as strong in his mother as in his father. And he had been by no means without a similar ambition himself, though with him the ambition had been only fitful, not enduring. He had a brother, a clergyman, a busy, stirring, eloquent London preacher, who got churches built, and was heard of far and wide as a rising man, who had married ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... than we had ever before known in our lives. And most of them were worth knowing and the others worth some endeavor to make worth knowing. We were all pulling together down here—some harder than others, to be sure, but all with a distinct ambition that was dependent for success upon nothing but ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... aid, Fairfax; encourage me; feed my vanity; let hungry ambition banquet and allow me to be a hero, lest I relent: for, were I not or Lucifer or Coke Clifton, 'tis certain I should not persevere. By the host of heaven, Fairfax, but she is a divine creature! She steals upon the soul! A heart of rock could not resist her! Nor are ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... It was as he wished it, Beatrice, for his one great ambition was fully granted—to know the reality of the upper world, the winds of heaven and the sun! Impossible for him to have survived the great change. Death was inevitable and right. He wanted rest, and rest is his, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... perplexed. He had not once thought of the verses being paid for. He had thought that to see her poems in print might give Mercy a new incentive to work, might rouse in her an ambition, which would in part take the place of the stimulus which his teachings had given her. He very much disliked to tell her what he had done, and to give to her the money she had unwittingly earned. He feared that she would resent it; he feared that she would be too elated by it; ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... soul yearns and throbs and pulsates with an ambition to give the world a life-work that shall be marvelous in its scope, and weirdly entrancing in the vastness of ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... care of the rogue pony, Chinaman, devolved on myself. When the ponies went well, which was usually the case, when they did not suffer from the weather, we used to have long yarns about our respective services and mutual friends. Oates would often discuss the forthcoming southern journey, and his ambition was to reach the top of the Beardmore Glacier; he did not expect to be selected for the southern party, which was planned to contain four men only—two of these must have special knowledge of navigation, to check one another's observations—the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... and, to tell the truth, a B.A. has lost its charms for me. I long to devote my life more fully to literature. That is my first ambition, you know, and I seem to be wasting ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... hold his audience by any means—does seem to have been his ambition: if the joke mars the part, down with the part; if the ludicrous scene interrupts the development of the plot, down with the plot. We have plenty of verbal evidence that the dramatist frequently chose to let his characters become caricatures; we have some ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... whose talents, had not been recognized at headquarters, I possessed an ambition which, fortunately for my standing with the lieutenant of the precinct, had not yet been expressed in words. Though I had small reason for expecting great things of myself, I had always cherished the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... national scope or ambition took advantage of the new communication. Trade unions, benevolent associations, and professional societies multiplied their annual congresses and conventions, and increased the proportion of the population that knew something ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... not trouble your majesty with my birth, which is not illustrious enough to merit your attention. For my situation, my parents, by their good economy, left me enough to live on like an honest man, free from ambition, or being ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... He lost ambition in that line, and he soon became so overburdened with flesh that nothing save a question of life or death could have induced him to go ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... moreover, well content with his lot; he dined very well, did as he liked, and slept all he could. Nenila Makarievna had introduced into her household 'foreign ways,' as the neighbours used to say; she kept few servants, and had them neatly dressed. She was fretted by ambition; she wanted at least to be the wife of the marshal of the nobility of the district; but the gentry of the district, though they dined at her house to their hearts' content, did not choose her husband, but first the retired premier-major Burkolts, and then the retired second major ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... onwards. Its attraction, therefore, lies rather in episodes—the rivalry of the sorceresses Katla and Geirrid; the circumventing of the (in this case rather sinned against than sinning) bersarks Hall and Leikner; the very curious ghost-stories; and the artful ambition of Snorri the Godi. Still, to make an attractive legend of a sort of "county history" may be regarded as a rare triumph, and the saga is all the more important because it shows, almost better than any other, the real motive of nearly all these stories—that they are real chansons ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... there are after all but a few kinds of human feelings. Some form of hunger, love, hate, fear, hope or ambition gives rise to every human ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... of every God of you. Nay more: temples of Zeus, and Apollo, and Hera, temples of Hermes, are everywhere to be seen; but who ever saw a temple of Prometheus? You may judge from this, how far I have sacrificed the common cause to my private ambition. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... I have never tried, in even one single little instance, to help cultivate the cultivated classes. I was not equipped for it either by native gifts or training. And I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game—the masses. I have seldom deliberately tried to instruct them, but I have done my best to entertain them, for they can get instruction elsewhere.. .. My audience is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Jew-tradesman. Her beauty fascinated an imbecile old nobleman, who, having insulted the daughter with 'liberal' proposals, that were scornfully rejected, tempted the father with 'honorable' ones, which were eagerly accepted. The old Jew, in his ambition to become father-in-law to the old earl, forgot his religious prejudices and coaxed his daughter to sacrifice herself. And thus Berenice D'Israeli became Countess of Hurstmonceux. The old peer survived ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... her lot, she would abide by the choice. Yes, and she would do her duty also, whatever it might entail. Ralph should never know, never dimly suspect. And that other—he would never know either. His had been but a passing fancy. He trod the way of ambition, and there was no room in his life for anything besides. If she had shown him her heart, it had been but a momentary glimpse; and he had forgotten already. She was sure he had forgotten. And she had desired that he should ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... with alcohol, collapsing in a few hours. Two or three years later a travelling dentist visited the mine and put up his tent near the bunk-house. He was more or less of a charlatan, but he fired Mrs. McTeague's ambition, and young McTeague went away with him to learn his profession. He had learnt it after a fashion, mostly by watching the charlatan operate. He had read many of the necessary books, but he was too hopelessly stupid to get much benefit ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... between Mehemet and his sovereign, long foreseen, broke out in the year 1832. After the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in return for his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession, however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrel with Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an army into Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov., 1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to concern itself largely with groupings or alliances, which have in the main resulted from ambition, distrust, or fear. As has already been shown, the Partition of Africa was arranged without a resort to arms; but after that appropriation of the lands of the dark races, the white peoples in the south came into ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... comforts or accommodations; his fare was as simple, his dress as plain, his lodging as rude, as those of the meanest of his followers. To one end alone his attention was exclusively directed, on one acquisition alone his heart was set. Glory, military glory, was the ceaseless object of his ambition; all lesser desires were concentrated in this ruling passion; for this he lived, for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... I do know, and you may not,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Dempsey had no other ambition than to be allowed to stagnate at a desk to the end of his life, and this modest ambition would have been realised had it not been for a slight accident—the single accident that had found its way into Dempsey's well-ordered and closely-guarded life. One ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... laughed Mrs. Raeburn as she tried to pull him up. 'I have no ambition to herd sheep. You little wretch!' she continued in quite a different tone of voice; for Tim was in "full ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... who loves the calling and has an ambition to become a successful farmer should understand that no two of these essentials are sufficient, but that all three are necessary. Although this is so simple as to be almost axiomatic, it is indeed surprising ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men—which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Caspar Goodwood, and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... to the victorious Huayna Capac. This division of the Incarial Empire, was not at all to the liking of either Huascar or Atahualpa. They both wished to be sole Inca. Civil war was the result. Atahualpa, by treachery, had taken his brother prisoner, and would doubtless have achieved his ambition, but just then Pizarro invaded the country, and the reign ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... writers, unwilling to believe Christina base enough to marry Norby, regard the whole story of her consent as false. It seems impossible, however, that a false rumor should have been so generally believed by those who knew her. The more natural assumption is that her ambition caused her to accept the advances of her suitor even if she did not positively yield to ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... in my regard for myself—for had I not longed to show off in her eyes? I suspect almost all silly actions have their root in selfishness, whether it take the form of vanity, of conceit, of greed, or of ambition. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... expert needle-woman should be an object of ambition to every fair one. Never is beauty and feminine grace so attractive, as when engaged in the honorable discharge of household duties, and domestic cares. The subjects treated of in this little manual are of vast importance, and to them we are indebted for a large amount of the ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... Diamond. The jewel was often stolen, but it had a knack of coming back again to the lap of Hlo-hlo. Thangobrind knew this, but he was no common jeweller and hoped to outwit Hlo-hlo, perceiving not the trend of ambition and lust and that they ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for one APPLE, DAMNED all mankind. I wish to divest myself, as far as possible, of that untutored custom. I have long since learned that the perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambition to our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people." Ambulinia was sent off to prepare for a long and tedious journey. Her new acquaintances had been instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret. Elfonzo ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... spare time in cinemas," said Crewe, "and when he is not there he is acting picture dramas. His ambition in life is to be a ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... well, I will leave off preaching, and perhaps you will allow me to conclude with a piece of advice that ought to be acceptable to one whose ambition it is to become a millionaire. You cannot have forgotten where you put your mother's head. Now, be a sensible boy for once, run away and find it, take it to Dr. Orsi up there in the museum and he will give you plenty of soldi for it—more ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... should be ambages in such a matter. The man who resolved to commit himself to such a task should come forward with apparent difficulty with great diffidence, and even with actual difficulty. He should keep himself almost hidden, as behind a mask, and should tell of his own ambition with doubtful, quivering voice. And the ambages should take time. He should approach the citadel to be taken with covered ways working his way slowly and painfully. But this young man, before he had been in the house three ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... wrote to him often, without mentioning Sidonie, by the way. Risler supposed that some one had told Frantz of the disaster that had befallen him, and he too avoided all allusion to the subject in his letters. "Oh! when I can send for him to come home!" That was his dream, his sole ambition: to restore the factory and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... millionaire. I too have denied myself, have worked and struggled to make a home for the girl I cared for. You have succeeded and you are happy. I can hold Edith's—I beg your pardon, my wife's hand in mine and I am happy. I have no ambition to be a millionaire. I was very ambitious ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of, conte, are not likely to indulge in such an ambition," she said, with a faint sigh; "more especially," and her eyes flashed indignantly, "since Signor Ferrari thinks it his duty to mount guard over me. I suppose he wishes to keep me for himself—a most impertinent and foolish notion! There is only one thing to do—I ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... tears and his illnesses, his merciless exactions, his endless claim on mind and body and spirit—but perhaps the glowing beauty of a Rebecca, the buoyant indomitable spirit of a Ted, the sturdy charm of a small Robert, whose grip on life, whose energy and ambition were as strong ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... services of a group of paid agents—some of them holding highly responsible positions—to sing their praises and advocate their cause. They enlisted others by more subtle means, delicate flattery and social ambition. They taught diplomats and consular officials, especially of Great Britain and America, that it was a bad thing to become a persona non grata to Tokyo. They were backed by a number of people, who were sincerely won ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... To cold ambition or to joy's sweet store, Ye dusty corpses minister no more, We give to you neglect. Nor reck we of that suff'ring world's pale bourne Where you beyond the bridgeless barrier mourn O'erpast the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... after ascending the highest summits of the hills on the north side of the river, that captain Lewis first caught a distant view of the Rock mountains, the object of all our hopes, and the reward of all our ambition. On both sides of the river and at no great distance from it, the mountains followed its course: above these, at the distance of fifty miles from us, an irregular range of mountains spread themselves from west to northwest from his position. To the north of these a few elevated points, the most ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... thou see holy love in a husband's smile. His kiss shall have the taint of Judas. From his arms thou shalt start with horror, as from those of thy wronged father's betrayer,—perchance his deathsman! Ill omen broods on the cradle of the child for whom a mother's ambition was but a daughter's perfidy. Woe to thee, wife and mother! Even my forgiveness cannot ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him so fondly—whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only because Madelon was not the most attractive ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... my will," he replied, with some pomposity, for who that has just gained an object of ambition can be humble?—"it is that you shut up this whisky shop, and betake yourself to a more decent way ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and cold, and Johnny shivered at the first contact with the outside air. The stars had not yet begun to pale in the sky, and the city lay in blackness. Both Johnny and his mother shuffled their feet as they walked. There was no ambition in the leg muscles to swing the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... Selwyn's indifference to life, to its problems and struggles and many-sidedness, that makes me at times impatient with him beyond restraint. In his profession he is successful. His ambition makes him work, but a weariness of things, of the unworthwhileness of human effort, the futility of striving, the emptiness of achievement, possesses him frequently, and in his dark days he pays the penalty of his points of view. If only he could ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in the innermost record of these days—in those letters which, not yet daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife—there is not a hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... When Europeans were at last convinced that it was not India, they began again to seek a way to the East, and looked on the continent of America merely as an obstacle in their path. To find the road to Cathay was still their chief ambition. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... her mother, or to carry soup to someone in Mrs Hunt's district who had been overlooked. She would have given up her music altogether if her courage had not been revived from time to time by Mr Goodwin, and her ambition rekindled by hearing him play; as it was, she always came back to it with fresh heart ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... flaw. Mrs. Wentworth had fallen a victim to her folly. Love of pleasure, love of admiration, love of display, had become a part of Mrs. Wentworth's life, and she was beginning to reap the fruits of her ambition. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... the guilt of civil war, And close the scene of blood. Already Caesar Has ravaged more than half the globe, and sees Mankind grown thin by his destructive sword: Should he go farther, numbers would be wanting To form new battles, and support his crimes. Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make Among ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... it suggested the ripping music of the scythe-blade which should lay it low. Sam had taken good care of the cornfield, garden, and the cattle, and Gilbert's few words of quiet commendation were a rich reward for all his anxiety. His ambition was, to be counted "a full hand,"—this was the toga virilis, which, once entitled to wear, would make him feel that he ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... after the old-fashioned method used by some South Sea islanders. But evidently the boy did not twirl the stick fast enough to produce sufficient heat to make the fine tinder smoke, and then take fire. Giraffe's ambition was commendable, however, and so Thad said nothing; only crept away again, after touching Allan on ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... he added by way of soliloquy, as he stood looking after him. 'Although you ARE a damper to a honourable ambition. You little think it, but you was the first to dash my hopes. Pecksniff would have built me up for life, but your sweet temper pulled me ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Pichegru, nor to relate his interviews with Moreau. The organisation of the plot is what interests us, by reason of the part taken in it by d'Ache. No one has ever explained what might have resulted politically from the combination of Moreau's embittered ambition, the insouciance of Pichegru, and the fanatical ardour of Georges. Of this ill-assorted trio the latter alone had decided on action, although he was handicapped by the obstinacy of the princes in refusing ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the youth put fuller strength into his arms and flung the knives yet higher into the air. But his ambition for the praise of the warriors was greater than his caution, for, in reaching forward to catch one of the weapons, he lost his balance and fell headlong into the deep green water beneath. And as he swam to shore the vikings ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... father goes wrong here. Love and ambition prompt him to provide abundantly for his children; he enslaves himself to give them those social advantages ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... on themselves and their own affairs. There are only two things that interest them; business and their own little world. If you talk about these things, they are interested at once; but they do not care a snap about your affairs, how you get on, or what your ambition is, or how they can help you. Our conversation will never reach a high standard while we live in such a feverish, selfish, and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... intent or ambition of these aliens must be called reasonable enough. They wished to establish a provincial government here on the same lines as in Sicily, of which island it has been said that it was never more prosperous than ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... as manifested itself in him. I believe that he had not himself suspected the strength of his passion; and the sole resource for him, as I said often, was to quit the city—to engage in active pursuits of enterprise, of ambition, or of science. But he heard me as a somnambulist might have heard me—dreaming with his eyes open. Sometimes he had fits of reverie, starting, fearful, agitated; sometimes he broke out into maniacal movements of wrath, invoking some absent ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... accepted; and Bert soon had the satisfaction of seeing the great ambition of his life accomplished. He had employment, which promised to become a profitable business, as indeed it did in a few years. The old man and the lad proved useful to each other; and, more than that, he was united once more with his mother and sisters ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... his party. He had been offered a cabinet position by the elder Harrison and for some reason it had been withdrawn. He had been promised a place in Lincoln's cabinet, but some mysterious power had snatched it away. He was the one great man who had now no ambition for which to trim and fawn and lie, and for the very reason that he had abolished himself he was the most powerful leader who ever walked the halls ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... my parents had educated me for a bishop, or a viceroy, or some other modest employment, that this learned craft of mine might have fallen into better hands! Ye would lose in instruction, but I should be removed from the giddy heights of ambition, and die at last with some hopes of being a saint. Fair lady, thou travellest on a bootless errand, if I know the reason that tempts thee to cross the Alps at this late season ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the petty friction of our everyday life with one another, the jar of business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambition, the crossing of our will or the taking down of our conceit, which makes inward peace impossible. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... their first enlistment Hal and Noll had been imbued with the ambition to rise from the ranks, and become officers. This promotion from the ranks is not as simple a matter as young people might gain from reading the stories of some misinformed authors who know nothing of actual military service. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... that Majesty and its Court and its Army might have roofs and walls, not tents, for so long a siege, it covered the plain, a city raised in a night. The siege had been long as the war had been long. Hidalgo Spain and simple Spain were gathered here in great squares and ribbons of valor, ambition, emulation, desire of excitement and of livelihood, and likewise, I say it, in pieces not small, herded and brought here without any "I say yes" of their own, and to their misery. There held full flavor of crusade, as all along the war had ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... epigram. Take note that I speak only of inward acts, [364] expressed by an "I will", such as "I will scorn", "approve", etc.) even if there were a hundred pistoles to be gained forthwith, and he ardently desired to gain these hundred pistoles, and he were fired with the ambition to convince himself by an experimental proof that he is ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... together, all feeling the crisis more seriously than they liked to express. Mrs. Loveday thought how ridiculous a thing social ambition was in such a conjuncture as this, and vowed that she would leave Anne to love where she would. Anne, too, forgot the little peculiarities of speech and manner in Bob and his father, which sometimes jarred for a moment upon her more refined sense, and was thankful for their love ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... actually true. Sir Chichester Splay, spurred by his ambition to be a country gentleman with a foot in town, had chosen the neighbourhood on account of his name, so that it might come to be believed that ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... fourth-rate gentleman in England? I want to be a real Englishman, not half a one. I want to throw in my lot heart and hand with the greatest nation in the world. I don't want to be young Sam Buckley of Baroona. I want to be the Buckley of Clere. Is not that a noble ambition?" ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... eyes that so admireth thine, Have seen those walls which proud ambition reared To check the world, how they entombed have lain Within themselves, and on them ploughs have eared; Yet never found that barbarous hand attained The spoil of fame deserved by virtuous men, Whose glorious actions luckily had gained Th'eternal ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... [FN18] The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own. This was systematised by the servile rulers known in history as the Mameluke Beys and to the Egyptians as the Ghuzz. Each had his household of servile pages and squires, who looked forward to filling ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... in his wild ambition to become the best hunter of the tribe, as well as the best warrior, singled out an old bull, and gave chase to him. This was wanton as well as foolish, for bulls are dangerous and their meat is tough. What cared Eaglenose for that? ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... achieving the impossible. I am bound to confess that my new-born ardour was not mainly due to affection for the dead language in question, or even to esteem for my preceptress. But the idea of taking Low Heath, so to speak, by storm, had fairly roused my ambition. The glory of rising superior to my fate, of shaking off the ill-tutored Mr Evans and his works, and rejoining my old school-comrade with all the prestige of a fellow-exhibitioner, captivated my imagination and steeled me to the endurance ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... not permit their ascendency to be disputed. The ancestors of the present pretender, Congal, surnamed "the squint-eyed," had twice received and cherished the licentious Bards when under the ban of Tara, and his popularity with that still powerful order was one prop of his ambition. It is pretty clear also that the last rally of Druidism against Christianity took place behind his banner, on the plain of Moira. It was the year 637, and preparations had long gone on on both sides for a final trial of strength. Congal had recruited numerous bands of Saxons, Britons, Picts ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... evidence was overwhelming. He did not look at her for some moments and felt ashamed of the cruelty he had had to use, but there was no avoiding this when a number of people's happiness was at stake. After all, he thought it was rather her ambition than her affection that had been engaged. Then rousing herself with an ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... profligate lives, and for the most part, in accordance with public opinion, unmarried, were able to make no stand against the general corruption of the age, because- -at least if we are to trust such writers as Jerome and Chrysostom— they were giving themselves up to ambition and avarice, vanity and luxury, intrigue and party spirit, and had become the flatterers of fine ladies, "silly women laden with sins, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." Such a state of things not only drove poor creatures ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... small a matter makes one famous. A few months ago I was an humble, inconsequential country doctor. My greatest delight and ambition at that time was to find the indicated remedy, and see the sick recover. And I declare to you now, that while I enjoy this racing through the skies, and the roar and acclamation of the multitudes, yet all these are but secondary and insignificant ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... named the day-flowers after three brothers Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them - commemorated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom - published their works; the third, lacking application and ambition, amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal! Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was perpetrated in ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... You have your great-heart courage For all such ardours as might make you seem Some fabled hero standing against fate, But not in this. In sifting vanity From the right honour, and building from ambition, You have a vision constant as the tides, But not in this. They may look Sussex over For any man who found a crooked word Ever upon your lips, and vainly look, Because, dear, truth is an old habit in you, But not in this. Here in the night enchanted, With ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... Napoleon, satisfied with military glory, should not henceforth devote himself to internal improvements in France. Nelson, on the contrary, speaking in the house of lords, while he professed himself a man of peace, insisted on the danger arising from "a restless and unjust ambition on the part of our neighbours," and Sheridan delivered a vigorous speech in a like spirit. On the whole, in January, 1803, the prospects of assured peace and prosperity were much gloomier than they had been in January, 1802, before the treaty of Amiens. The funds were going down, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ... but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,—pride, and envy, and ambition, and revenge,—most fearful, from their alliance with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This was what Marlowe must have done before he could have conducted a single sustained scene of ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith |
