"Aspiring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all eastern evergreen trees is the hemlock, which forms a most vivid contrast to the groups of birch, and when they are massed in the background the birch stand out in fine relief. Then how different from the vigorous aspiring pines they are. Poor soil seems to be no drawback to the pines, for they appear to possess a native vitality found in no other tree, and push upward sturdily toward the light; their "spiry summits pointing always heavenward." The slender, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... was not the worst danger that menaced the intoxicated boy. Saville, the most seductive of tutors—Saville who, in his wit; his bon ton, his control over the great world, seemed as a god to all less elevated and less aspiring,—Saville was Godolphin's constant companion; and Saville was worse than a profligate—he was a gambler! One would think that gaming was the last vice that could fascinate the young: its avarice, its grasping, its hideous selfishness, its cold, calculating meanness, would, one might ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ordinary story—not by a long shot. You'll see. It seems he had fallen in love with a girl—had been in love with her for years—before he had left the East; a very young girl, nineteen, and of an aspiring family. The family, naturally, didn't look upon him with any favor whatsoever; he was poor and he didn't show the slightest inclination to engage in any of the pursuits they considered proper to the ambitions of a worthy young man. Rather ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and miserable set. Ravaillae might have looked well swinging in chains; Charlotte Corday is said to have died like an actress; Beale hung not without dignity, but these people, aspiring to overturn a nation, bore the appearance of a troop of ignorant folks, expiating the blood-shed of ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... young man aspiring to the Pulpit, the world expects you to be above all other things a minister of the Gospel. It does not expect you to be, primarily, a brilliant man, or a learned man, or witty, or eloquent, or any other thing that would put your name on the tongues of men. The world will ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... have to remember that the self he means is the highest self, that consciousness which he looks upon as open to the influx of the divine essence from which it came, and towards which all its upward tendencies lead, always aspiring, never resting; as he sings in ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the base of the Campanile, and looked at the bas-reliefs which wreathe it round; and, above them, a row of statues; and from bottom to top a marvellous minuteness of inlaid marbles, filling up the vast and beautiful design of this heaven-aspiring tower. Looking upward to its lofty summit,—where angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,—I could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the girls' tastes differed as much as their characters. Meg's had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange tree in it. Jo's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments. This year it was to be a plantation of sun flowers, the seeds of which cheerful land aspiring plant were to feed Aunt Cockle-top and her family of chicks. Beth had old-fashioned fragrant flowers in her garden, sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the birds and catnip for the pussies. Amy had a bower in hers, rather small and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... it went against the grain with him to fetch for our opponents; Patsy had a good deal of the primeval left in him. And it's safe to say that no one there was more interested. I don't think he doubted for a moment that Fosgill would win, and I fancy he thought me pretty cheeky for aspiring so far ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... disappointments of his life. The ambitions of Peter Martyr were never excessive, for he was in all things a man of moderation; the honours he obtained, though many, were sufficiently modest to protect him from the competition and jealousy of aspiring rivals, yet he would certainly not have refused a bishopric. After seeing four royal confessors raised to episcopal rank, he slyly remarked that, "amongst so many confessors, it would have been well to have ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Townsend for Seattle and Tacoma, we enter the Sound and sail down into the heart of the green, aspiring forests, and find, look where we may, beauty ever changing, in lavish profusion. Puget Sound, "the Mediterranean of America" as it is sometimes called, is in many respects one of the most remarkable bodies of water in the world. Vancouver, who came here ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... of the preceding. Born in 1789. At thirty-eight she was still pretty, and, having always been somewhat aspiring, she endeavored (in 1827), by hook or by crook, to entangle Charles Grandet, lately returned from the Indies. She wished to make a son-in-law out of him, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... were familiar with suffering for a cause. But most American readers of our generation live easily and have always lived easily, and that undoubtedly accounts for the extraordinary popularity here of aspiring books. Reading of a fictitious hero who suffers for others is a tonic for our conscience, and like massage takes the place of exercise. By a twist in the same argument, it may be seen that the cheerful optimist in fiction, who Pollyannawise believes all is for the best, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the Strand, But now have found My way to pound, In Baron Newton's land; Where my aspiring head aloft is rear'd, T' observe the motions of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... of Appeal. It was universally acknowledged to be so, and the memory of it still remains, and very old lawyers still love to recall its glories. It was composed of Lord Chancellor Campbell and the Lords Justices Knight-Bruce and Turner. Bethell (afterwards Lord Westbury) was an ambitious and aspiring man, and was always most caustic in his criticisms. He had been arguing before the above Court one day, and upon his turning round after finishing his argument, some counsel in the row behind him ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... group, especially those who are in the difficult position of greater sensitiveness but moderate means in days of sickness. It serves the part of our community which more than any other sets the pace of the civilization about us—the intelligent aspiring workers who may not have reached the goal of absolute financial independence. It creates the standard of which we may dream that it might become the standard ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... manner only can man hope to achieve that perfect normal state to which the best thought of the human race is aspiring, where he can create and control influences instead of being created and controlled by them, as the majority of us ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... between flowerless beds with his companion, stood stock still. The Chief Whip of a political party is a devil of a fellow. To the aspiring young politician he is much more a devil of a fellow than the Prime Minister or any Secretary of State. If a Chief Whip breathes the suggestion that a man might possibly stand for election as a Member of Parliament, it means that ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... think as we may of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The whole aerial superstructure—the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical synthesis—all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore?—From the want of any philosophic account of space, to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... valour was such that he never thought he had achieved enough, and whose search for true glory was insatiable, considered the reduction of Spain as affording but a faint idea of the hopes which his aspiring mind had conceived. He now directed his view to Africa and Great Carthage, and the glorious termination of the war, as redounding to his honour, and giving lustre to his name. Judging it therefore to be now necessary to pave the way ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... high honour the word of Hesiod which speaketh thereof[10], and exhorteth thereunto his sons, whereby he bringeth unto his city a general fame: and for his kind entreating of strangers is he loved, to the just mean aspiring, to the just mean holding fast; and his tongue departeth not from his thoughts: and among athlete men he is as the bronze-grinding Naxian ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... Majesty should prefer him at all to an Office of such traditional distinction as the Wardenship was an honour to which the Governor-General would never at any time have dreamt of aspiring. But by conferring it upon him thus—during his absence—and above all, by conferring it upon him in immediate succession to one whom he must all his life regard with reverence, affection, and gratitude—your Majesty has ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... movement, to make no mention of the palpable effect, now appearing upon the face of society, of their action in the past. And hence, in the future, we shall see in a noble, far-reaching, broadly spreading, heaven-aspiring conservative radicalism the prevailing characteristic of American life ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the faubourg Saint-Germain, twice a cabinet minister, and now for the fourth time an orator in the Chamber, and aspiring to another ministry, laid a warning finger significantly on his ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to be dimly adumbrated in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the race are too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree. These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school, watching it go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in seclusion keeping the keys of the occult.[49] All of which would be very wonderful, if true. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... irremediable that would not be denied, and would whisper into their ears long after Donkin had ceased speaking. Our little world went on its curved and unswerving path carrying a discontented and aspiring population. They found comfort of a gloomy kind in an interminable and conscientious analysis of their unappreciated worth; and inspired by Donkin's hopeful doctrines they dreamed enthusiastically of the time when every lonely ship would travel over a serene sea, manned by ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... heart's gratitude; but there were nearly as great a number who came with a compliment, and added a petition, or a demand, or a suggestion, usually unwarranted, often impertinent. Politicians, public speakers, aspiring writers, actors, elocutionists, singers, inventors (most of them he had never seen or heard of) cheerfully asked him for a recommendation as to their ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... These rails have become classical in our history, and the name of rail-splitter has been more than the degree of a college. Not that the splitter of rails is especially meritorious, but because the people are proud to trace aspiring talent to humble beginnings, and because they found in this tribute a new opportunity of vindicating the dignity ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... was almost more bitter to me than the pain. This then was the result of my high living! This was what I had got by turning up my nose at my lot in Beadle Square, and aspiring to associate with my betters! This was the manner in which I was to make an impression on my old schoolfellow, and improve my footing with my new friends! No ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... there anything absurd in his aspiring in those her circumstances to win her. He was a man of good breeding, and more than agreeable manners—with a large topographical experience, and a social experience far from restricted, for, as I have already mentioned, he had travelled much, and in the company of persons of high ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... his ideal,—so the poet works out his states of poetic feeling. He grasps and holds and sustains them amidst the multiplicity of upflying thoughts and thick-coming fancies;—no matter how subtile or how aspiring they may be, he fastens them in the chamber of his imagination until his distant purpose is accomplished, and he has found a language for them which the world will understand. And this is where Shakspeare's art is so noble,—in that he conquers the entire universe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... abyss of difference which yawns between Heaven and Hell; and the practical upshot of the current eschatology is that all men—the self-sacrificing equally with the self-indulgent, the kind and compassionate equally with the hard-hearted, the spiritually-minded equally with the worldly, the aspiring equally with the indifferent—are to reap the same reward. If a man is a notoriously evil liver, those who have suffered at his hands or been violently scandalised by his conduct may perhaps find a sombre pleasure ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... accordingly, the hotel where he resided was, in the course of the week, visited by all the most distinguished of the French statesmen; and he had the honour of being invited to dine with them successively. At these parties, the conversation turned very much on the importance of the arts to all nations aspiring to fame and eminence; and he very soon perceived, that the vast collection of trophies which adorned the Louvre, had not been formed so much for ostentatious exhibition, as with a view to furnish models of study for artists; constituting, in fact, but the elementary part of a grand system of national ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... aestimanti, 11. The aspiring, and especially the vain, may learn from this passage a lesson of great practical value. Compare also Sec. 8, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... was erected at the sole expense of the Catholics who, abreast of the times, met at every turn the requirements of an aspiring class of colored ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... it, that the Poet was three years in working it through. To be sure, such heraldic gentry was of little worth in itself, and the Poet knew this well enough; but then it assured a certain very desirable social standing, and therefore, as an aspiring member of society, he was right ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... two things the very moment he has finished it:—the first is, never to feel surprise again at the verdict against Colonel Despard; and the second is, that he will never trust his own life in the hands of an aspiring place-hunting lawyer. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... which he swept, innumerable birds warbled or twittered their astonishment that he could fly with such heedless rapidity through that beautiful country, and make for the dismal town in such magnificent weather. One aspiring lark overhead seemed to repeat, with persistent intensity, its trill of self gratulation that it had not been born a man. Even the cattle appeared to regard the youth as a sort of ornithological curiosity, for the sentiment, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... republican State. The distress of the lower classes, in consequence of the Gaulish invasion, became intolerable. They became involved in debt, and thus were in the power of their creditors. Manlius undertook to be their defender, but the envy of the patricians caused him to be accused of aspiring to the supreme power, and he was, in spite of his great services, sentenced to death and hurled from the Tarpeian rock. His error was in premature reform. But, in the year 367 B.C., the tribunes Licinius ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... whole season is full of memories, churches, masses, prayers, associations. And it struck me as strange that this New Year's finishes another half of my life. I was nineteen that winter. This year I shall be just twice that. Nineteen years were all childhood, dreaming, planning, hoping, aspiring, but with no practical care, no responsibilities of any sort, the most sheltered existence a girl could have. And now nineteen of as varied an experience as most people know, teaching, housekeeping, bringing up the younger children, seven years of Paul Elder's, the settlement house, travel, London, ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... the barren desert smile" — to embower my dwelling in the midst of blossoming peas, and aspiring kidney beans, — to draw around me, as it were, a little luxuriant Eden, which should be the admiration of a Sunday public, as they stood riveted at the palings, unable to pass by without a lengthened survey; whilst the envied possessor, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... one sits himself down and takes pen in hand. However, this is not wholly uncomplimentary, since it proves at least two things: that the author is being read, and that he is making an impression. Said old Doctor Johnson to the aspiring poet, "Sir, I'll praise your book, but damn me if ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... thou, Burgundy, hast built Thy seat of power, and thy aspiring heart Would raise still higher, even to the clouds, The lofty edifice. But from on high A hand omnipotent shall check its rise. Fear thou not hence the downfall of thy house! Its glory in a maiden shall survive; Upon her breast ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... to the illusion more completely than she. No one had ever hunted with a more passionate determination for that correlative soul that would submerge, exalt, and complete her own aspiring soul. And what had she found? Men. Merely men. Satiety or disaster. Weariness and disgust. She had not an illusion left. She had put all that ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Sprowl grew attentive. By the lieutenant-colonel was meant no other person than Augustus Bythewood, who had received his commission the day before. Well might Lysander, at the mention of him to whom both these aspiring officers owed everything, bend a little and listen. Ropes proceeded. "He feels a cussed sight badder now he believes the gal is in a cave somewhars with the schoolmaster, than he did when he thought she was burnt ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... be of nobler capacity and larger accomplishment. So while we are here, let us think earnestly of the few brief chances remaining to us—they grow fewer every hour. On one side is the endless, glorious heritage of the purely aspiring, Immortal Spirit; on the other the fleeting Mirage of this our present Existence; and, midway between the two, the swinging pendulum of HUMAN WILL, which decides our fate. God does not choose for us, or compel our love—we are free to fashion out our ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... drooping, with a sweet expression, as if under that mystic veil of sleep the soul were seeing things forbidden to the waking eye. Only the gentlest heaving of the quiet breast told that the heavenly spirit within had not gone whither it was hourly aspiring to go. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... A lazy youth becomes a burden to those parents, whom he ought to comfort, if not support. Always aspiring to something higher than he can reach, his life is a life of disappointment and shame. If marriage befall him, it is a real affliction, involving others as well as himself. His lot is a thousand times worse ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Sandwich, by the restoration of the once celebrated haven. The town, we may add, is noble in its decay; for, among the jurats and burgesses are several worthy and opulent retired merchants, who would doubtless rejoice in the revival of Sandwich, for the welfare of their more aspiring townsmen,—Ed. M. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... something worthy to claim the attention of those who did not use it merely for digestive purposes. She related a story of a disastrous theater-party which she had once joined, and which had been arranged by an aspiring woman with little sense ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... is a fast city. New York is not more ambitions; Chicago not more aspiring; San Francisco not more confident in its future. Amazing sight! Here is a city which, at the end of three thousand years, looks forward to a longer and grander ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... proposed for this happy and independent subsistence was, that he should retire into Wales, and receive an allowance of fifty pounds a year, to be raised by a subscription, on which he was to live privately in a cheap place, without aspiring any more to affluence, or having any ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... their anguish, these creatures finally decided that it might not be spring fever, but merely hunger. They saw the statue of the late Mr. Sloan of the Lackawanna Railroad—Sam Sloan, the bronze calls him, with friendly familiarity. The aspiring forelock of that statue, and the upraised finger of Samuel Sullivan Cox ("The Letter Carriers' Friend") in Astor Place, the club considers two of the most striking things in New York statuary. Mr. Pappanicholas, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... was open to approach, as they sought tickets to the opera, because they were not a part of it. Adams did like the rest. All thought of serious education had long vanished. He tried to acquire a few French idioms, without even aspiring to master a subjunctive, but he succeeded better in acquiring a modest taste for Bordeaux and Burgundy and one or two sauces; for the Trois Freres Provencaux and Voisin's and Philippe's and the Cafe Anglais; for the Palais Royal Theatre, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea. The intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William's half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretence of aspiring by arms to the papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the King's bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... altered. I did not know before,' added the strong, stern man, with trembling voice and glistening eyes, 'that she was so inextricably twined about my heart—my life!' It is difficult to estimate the bitterness of such a disappointment to a proud, aspiring man like Dutton. I pitied him sincerely, mistaken, if not blameworthy, as he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... however, for Miss Belfield was almost wholly unallayed by jealousy; she harboured not any suspicion that she was loved by young Delvile, whose aspiring spirit led her infinitely more to fear some higher rival, than to believe he bestowed even a thought upon the poor Henrietta: but still she wished with the utmost ardour to know the length of their acquaintance, how often they had met, when they had conversed, what notice ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... is Lazarus but a type of the aspiring—the soul-hungry, whether he be a millionaire or a poor clerk—the determined seeker whose eye is single and whose whole body is full of light? In this view, surely more creditable to the intellect ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... life, untroubled, unknown, in the thick woods of Arden. Rosalind, a daughter of the deposed king, has been kept as a sort of hostage at the court of the tyrant in Bordeaux, presumably his capital. All of a sudden she is exiled in her turn, without more explanation than "I have heard of thy aspiring speaches and intended treasons."[157] Alinda, her friend, the daughter of the tyrant, refuses to leave her, and both fly the court, Rosalind being dressed as a page, a rapier at her side, her wit full of repartees, her ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... effect all this, and his example, (in support of the maxim, that "every man is the architect of his own fortune,") will be respected and cherished, at home and abroad, as long as self-advancement continues to be the great stimulus to aspiring industry. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... Gaul the First Triumvirate was suddenly ended by the death of one of its members. It had been a part of their bargain in dividing the Roman world that Crassus should have the government of Syria. But this unlucky general, while aspiring to rival Caesar's exploits by new conquests beyond the Euphrates, lost his army and his life in battle with the Parthians. Besides checking the extension of the Roman arms in the remote East, the disaster had its effect on Roman politics. It dissolved the triumvirate and prepared the way ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... seem too sweeping a condemnation, but it is not. There are some honorable exceptions of course, but only just enough of them to attract notice by the contrast, and thus to prove the rule. If an aspiring young composer wishes to appear in print, the point to which he must direct his attention is to secure, not a good original melody or a piquant accompaniment, but a "catching" title, like "Timber-Thief Galop," "Silver Bill Polka," or "Sitting Bull March." If his choice in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome Outlives, in fame, the pious fool that raised it. Shakespeare's King Richard III. (Altered), Act iii. Sc. 1. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... the formation of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph; wouldn't call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... abolish a needless and unjust protectorate. The limb, which is now disjointed and bleeding, will be united to the body politic. What belongs to the red man shall hereafter in truth be his; and, thirsting for knowledge and aspiring to be free, every fetter shall be broken ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... near enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best composers—at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments that are almost culture ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... intensely human, than does the less sensational story of the Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending the experiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit more human interest than the saints confirmed ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... and forceful individual was Matthew. It was his creed to take what he could get away with, provided that in the taking he broke no moral, legal or ethical code; and if any thought of the apparent incongruity of a sailor's aspiring to the hand of a millionaire shipowner's daughter had occurred to him—which, by the way, it had not—he would doubtless have ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... this aspiring soul, Great deeds on earth remain undone, But, sharpened by the sight of one, Many shall press toward the goal. Thou running foremost of the throng, The fire of striving in thy breast, Shalt win, although the race be long, And ever ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... never hated any one, shot him down; and he lingered amidst the fervent sympathy of the whole world, till he died nine or ten weeks later. Of all the great Ohioans he was the gentlest and kindest nature; he never did harm to any man, and his heart was as high as his aspiring intellect above anything base or low. His ambition was in all things for what was ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... mathematics and geography; quiet, fond of solitude, capricious, haughty, extremely inclined to egotism, speaking little, energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in repartee; having much self-esteem; ambitious and aspiring to any height: "the youth is worthy of protection." There is, unfortunately, no documentary evidence to sustain the genuineness of this report; but whatever its origin, it is so nearly contemporary that it probably contains ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... more or less low-lying and fever-stricken parts, large tracts being absolutely uninhabitable for that reason, especially in summer. Some of the rest is occupied on terms of lease by burghers, and has up to the present afforded scope for some of the less aspiring class. About one-quarter of the aggregate Transvaal farms are owned by Uitlander individuals or by companies who are mostly English. But the bulk of the land owned by burghers in both States has gradually become cut up by ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... that a courtier well knows how to employ, to flatter the taste by which he hoped to benefit. In secret he insinuated into the lady's ear that she was admired by the prince. M. de Tourville knew her to be of an aspiring character, and rightly judged that ambition was her strongest passion. When once the hope of captivating the prince had been suggested to her, she began to disdain the proposed alliance with the house of Altenberg; but she concealed this disdain, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... seemed lifted from his eyes; he saw that immeasurable distance between himself and his associates which the deceiving mists of pleasure had hitherto concealed; he was refined by a sense of his courage in aspiring to Ione. He felt that henceforth it was his destiny to look upward and to soar. He could no longer breathe that name, which sounded to the sense of his ardent fancy as something sacred and divine, to lewd and vulgar ears. She was no longer the beautiful girl once seen and passionately ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... struggle with his uncharitable accusers and traducers. When a minister was under fire, he usually stood by the unfortunate, if there was any possible chance to save him for the good of the service. He made himself, too, a patron of young men aspiring to the ministry, raising money for their support by impressing upon the people the importance of educating them. In this connection he trained and helped to support Dr. James E. Willis, who was baptized, licensed and ordained to preach under Dr. Lee. Through contact ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... Universe, now when I find he cannot pronounce the h's!" Really this is no caricature; you have not seen the match of Heraud in your days. I mentioned to him once that Novalis had said, "The highest problem of Authorship is the writing of a Bible."— "That is precisely what I am doing!" answered the aspiring, unaspirating.*—Of Landor I have not got much benefit either. We met first, some four years ago, on Cheyne Walk here: a tall, broad, burly man, with gray hair, and large, fierce-rolling eyes; of the most restless, impetuous vivacity, not to be ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... freeman of the celestial city. It would be of little consequence to show in which of two equally selfish and short-sighted parties a man enrolled himself six hundred years ago, but it is worth something to know that a man of ambitious temper and violent passions, aspiring to office in a city of factions, could rise to a level of principle so far above them all. Dante's opinions have life in them still, because they were drawn from living sources of reflection and experience, because they were reasoned out from the astronomic ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... impressed by the strength of purpose they seemed to possess, and, having a good bit of stick-to-ativeness himself, admired it in others. Moreover, he had been forced to make his own way in life when young, and could sympathize with other aspiring souls. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... No aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules. As Mrs. Renshaw remarked in the preceding article, "Impression should ever precede and be stronger than expression." All ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... here, immortal there; Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his justice, be the god of God. In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel; And who but wishes to invert the laws Of Order, sins against ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... more selfish nature. His pride and vanity attach him to a form of government which favors his pretensions and gives him a share in its honors and distinctions. Whatever hopes or projects might be entertained by a few aspiring characters, it must generally happen that a great proportion of the men deriving their advancement from their influence with the people, would have more to hope from a preservation of the favor, than from innovations in ...
— The Federalist Papers
... in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... insanity in their protracted periods of causeless mental agony and in their fierce hostility to heresy and to science. Alike in Brahmin, Buddhist, Mohammedan, and Christian nations have we seen the vast expenditure of spiritual energy in the blind struggle of aspiring souls. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a truly loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that, though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring future. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... applied himself to his books with extraordinary diligence. His preceptor was in all respects adequate to his task; and the requisites of the college being quite liberal and republican—not repressing the generous ardor of young ambition by exacting too much in the outset—the aspiring Daniel crossed the threshhold of the university without any considerable difficulty. His prudent and sagacious mother had managed every thing with consummate forecast and tact; and to avoid any difficulty that might have resulted from too many unanswered questions, her son had been represented ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... huge Tenerif his azure crest, Aspiring DRABA builds her eagle nest; Her pendant eyry icy caves surround, Where erst Volcanos min'd the rocky ground. 255 Pleased round the Fair four rival Lords ascend The shaggy steeps, two menial youths attend. High in the setting ray the beauty stands, And her ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... been convicted), Colonel North, Sir Francis Baring, Cox of Finsbury, Wiscount Williams of Lambeth, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Malmsbury, and a host of others. But his attacks rarely overstepped due limits; nor did Punch ever find another aspiring Bunn among them. Amongst the inanimate objects which at various times Punch made his mark were Trafalgar Square and its Fountains (or the "Squirts," as they were scornfully called), the National Gallery, Mud-Salad Market, Leicester Square, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... I mervaile that th'aspiring Guise Dares once adventure without the Kings assent, To meddle ...
— Massacre at Paris • Christopher Marlowe
... star; but it had a further appeal, too, to the imaginative mind, in that it hung a glowing point of ageless light, infinitely remote, intolerably mysterious, a symbol of all the lustrous energies of the aspiring soul. And in one sense indeed the pure imagination could invest such vast creatures of God with even a finer, freer charm than scientific apprehension. Science could indicate its bulk, its motions, its distance, even ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first articled to a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a reporter, and then a successful author; and how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, who dies; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effecting the general ruin, and aspiring to the hand of Agnes, till his villanies are detected and his machinations defeated by Micawber—how all this comes about, would be a long story to tell. But, as is usual with Dickens, there are subsidiary rills of story ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... leading in America will depend, not so much on her material wealth, or her armed force, as on what the attitude towards life and the ideals of her citizens are going to be. Americans have a certain eagerness for knowledge; they have also, for all their absorption in success, the aspiring eye. They do want the good thing. They don't always know it when they see it, but they want it. These qualities, in combination with material strength, give America her chance. Yet, if she does not set her face against "Gadarening," we are all bound for downhill. If she goes in for ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... and to educate him; we swell within him to the uttermost every aspiration, catching the first flame of youth and feeding it, until the whole heart glows like an altar, and the soul is a temple bright within, and sweet, by the incense-smoke and aspiring flame of perpetual offerings and divine sacrifices. We have never done with him. We lead him from the cradle to boyhood; we take him then into manhood, and guide him through all its passes; we console him in age, and then stand, as he dies, to ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... gradually gained Adrienne's friendship. From an ostentatious desire to be able to tell of what happened at the ministry; to be on the first list of guests, when the minister received or gave a ball, Sabine Marsy, who had suffered from the mania of aspiring to become an artist, patronized the intransigeant painters and exhibited at the salon, now set her mind on playing the role of a political figure in Paris. Madame Gerson, Blanche, as Sabine called her, had a similar ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... of its measures, the secret of its impotence is disclosed. Even while it invokes their assistance, it is on the condition that they shall act exactly as much as the government chooses, and exactly in the manner it appoints. They are to take charge of the details, without aspiring to guide the system; they are to work in a dark and subordinate sphere, and only to judge the acts in which they have themselves co-operated, by their results. These, however, are not conditions on which the alliance of ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... now, the sight of her is enough to give one fits. Dora gets on with her quite well, which is more than I can say for myself. Only when we got out aid I notice that Siegfried's sister, Fraulein Hulda, had been sitting next the aspiring actress. She is awfully nice, and many, many years ago she must have been very pretty; she has such soft brown eyes, and her hair is the same colour as her brother's; but he has glorious blue eyes, which get quite black when he is angry, as he was when he was talking ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... soliloquy, "they are gone, never more to return, the careless happy days of childhood, the sunny period of youth, and the aspiring dreams of mature manhood. I once indulged in many ambitious dreams of fame, and those dreams have never been realized. Many with whom I set out on equal ground have outstripped me in the race of life, and here am I alone. Many who were once my inferiors have nearly overtaken ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... the dawn, and during the early progress, of the revival of letters and the Reformation of Religion;[116] and even now, after three centuries of scientific progress and social advancement, it is once more rising into formidable strength, and aspiring to universal ascendancy. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... which the secretary could refuse. Pensively the visitor reflected for a few minutes, and, suddenly raising his eye doubtfully, he said, "Why then, Mr Secretary, have you ever an old black coat that you could give me?" Oh, aspiring genius of ambition! from that topmast round of thy aerial ladder that a man should descend thus awfully!—from the office of vice-president for the U.S. that he should drop, within three minutes, to "an old black coat!" The secretary was aghast: he rang the bell for such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the pews in the old meeting-houses had towering partition walls, which extended up so high that only the tops of the tallest heads could be seen when the occupants were seated. Permissions to build were often given with modifying restrictions to the aspiring pew-builders, as for instance is recorded of the Haverhill church, "provided they would not build so high as to damnify and hinder the light of them windows," or of the Waterbury church, "if the pues will not ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... when he saw that the archbishop was resolved not to take the oaths, but to forsake the post, he made an earnest application to me, to secure that for him at Archbishop Tillotson's hands. I pressed him in it as much as was decent for me to do, but he said he would not encourage these aspiring men, by promising any thing, before it should fall; as indeed none of them fell during his time. Wharton, upon this answer, thought I had neglected him, looking on it as a civil denial, and said he would be revenged; and so he published that specimen: upon which, I, in a letter ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of hateful or despicable qualities. I am even out of humour with my person, my face. So absurd am I in my estimates of merit, that my homely features and my scanty form had their part in restraining me from aspiring to one supreme in loveliness, and in causing the surprise that followed ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Euphrates' flood— Her active commerce, whose expanded range Monopolized the trade of all the East— Her stately capital, whose towers and domes Vied with proud Rome in architectural grace— Her own aspiring aims and high renown— All breathed around the Asiatic queen An atmosphere of greatness, and betrayed Her bold ambition, and her rivalry With the imperial mistress of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... to help this girl, or would be delighted to receive her home under the present conditions. Rather it indicated that their position was too precarious for them to be able to do it. They would be bitterly hard on her—these aspiring people of gentle birth and doubtful shifts, clinging to society by the skin of their teeth, were the hardest of all. The girl could not go back to them; she could not get anything to do in Holland, or elsewhere—in Heaven's name what could ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... An aspiring genius was D. Green: The son of a farmer,—age fourteen; His body was long and lank and lean,— Just right for flying, as will be seen; He had two eyes, each bright as a bean, And a freckled nose that grew between, A ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... introduced in the forum by a person of consular rank [c], and by him set forward in his road to fame. That laudable custom being at an end, all fences were thrown down: no sense of shame remained, no respect for the tribunals of justice. The aspiring genius wanted no patronage; he scorned the usual forms of a regular introduction; and, with full confidence in his own powers, he obtruded himself on the court. Neither the solemnity of the place, nor the sanctity of laws, nor the importance of the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... walls of dissension, of jealousy, and prejudice that divides race from race, nation from nation, and people from people, by proclaiming aloud the sublime gospel truth that we are all children of the same God, brothers and sisters of the same Lord Jesus Christ, and that we are all aspiring to a glorious inheritance in the everlasting kingdom of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... gold chain, took from it a little silver casket, beautifully carved and chased, the corners of which represented four bending figures, similar to the Caryatides, the forms of women, symbols of the angels aspiring to heaven. He placed the casket on the table; then opening it took out a little golden box, the top of which flew open when touched by a secret spring. This box contained an unctuous substance partly solid, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were to write merely his personal history, would not by so doing write the history of these civil wars. The three first, as principal figures in every revolution, are already historical; Bustamante as an honest man and a brave soldier; Santa Anna as an acute general, active and aspiring, whose name has a prestige, whether for good or for evil, that no other possesses; General Victoria, a plain, uneducated, well-intentioned man, brave and enduring. A passage in his life is well known, which ought to be mentioned as an offset to the doubtful anecdote of the two-headed ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Pitt, and Charles I. was made to pose as "a virtuous and able monarch," who was "the holocaust of direct taxation." Never, he declared, "did man lay down his heroic life for so great a cause, the cause of the Church and the cause of the Poor."[69] Aspiring to rise to power through the agency of Conservatives, whose narrow-minded conventional conservatism he despised, and to whose defects he was keenly alive, he wisely judged that it was a necessity, if his programme were to be executed, that the association of political power with landed possessions ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... wears in Emma's view, the incident is caught in the aspect which it happens to turn towards her imagination. Flaubert himself has retreated, and it is Emma with whom we immediately deal. Take, for example, the two figures of her lovers, Rodolphe and Leon, the florid country-gentleman and the aspiring student; if Flaubert were to describe these men as he sees them, apart from their significance to Emma, they would not occupy him for long; to his mind, and to any critical mind, they are both of them very small affairs. Their whole effect in the book is the effect they produce upon the sensibility ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... their billowy bulges seemed about to burst upon us like Cape-rollers. Every contrast was there of light and dark, short and tall, thick and thin; of age and death with lusty youth clinging around it; of the cocoa's drooping frond and the aspiring arm of bombax, the silk-cotton-tree, which rains brown gossamer when the wind blows; of the sloth-tree with its topping tuft, and the tangled mantle of the calamus or rattan, a palm like a bamboo-cane. The bristly pod of the dolichos (pruriens) hangs by the side of the leguminosae, from whose flattened, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Eton, and then to Trinity College, Oxford, where buccaneer instincts broke out and he left without a degree. Two careers were open to him, as to all aspiring sons of Noble Beef-eaters—he could enter ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of Brown University, "an ardent and aspiring scholar," was one of four or five young men in the then newly founded Theological Seminary at Andover, whose minds had become deeply impressed with the wants of the heathen, and a desire to go and labor among them. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... greet us. Everybody was most friendly and cheerful, thanks to Horne's personal influence. Two years before this same lot had been hostile. From every hidden village came the headmen or chiefs. They all wanted to shake hands-the ordinary citizen never dreamed of aspiring to that honour-and they all spat carefully into their palms before they did so. This all had to be done in passing; for ordinary village headmen it was beneath Our Dignity to draw rein. Once only we broke over this rule. That was in the case of an old fellow with white hair who managed to get so ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... in erecting my edifice; she only adorned it with her smiling grace. I shall do what fate and my people have a right to expect of me, but I do not say that it must be done immediately. I have time enough to wait; for as yet I do not stand on the pinnacle to which I am aspiring. My plans are not yet accomplished. I hope that I shall not die at so early an age as my father. I need ten years more to carry out my purposes. A sovereign ought not to set too narrow limits to his wishes; ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... was born at Sinigaglia, on the 13th of May, 1792. At the age of twenty-two he came to Rome. Anxious to serve the Holy Father, and yet not aspiring to the priesthood, he resolved to become a member of the Noble Guard. This the delicate state of his health forbade. Repelled by the Prince Commandant, he sought counsel of the Pope. Pius VII. pronounced that his destiny ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... but did the intelligent censors of the Radical press expect that those appointments of L.1500 a-year would be sought for or accepted by men at the bar, already making their L.3000, L.5000, L.8000, or L.10,000 a-year, and aspiring to the very highest honours of their profession? The gentlemen who have accepted these appointments, are many of them personally known to us as very acute and able practical men, who will be found to give the utmost satisfaction in the discharge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... gentle beams his rage disguises, And, like aspiring Tyrants, temporises— Never to be endured but when he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... entertained a party of children from the slums at her home. She addressed one particularly pretty and intelligent-looking little girl, who listened shyly. She urged the child to speak without embarrassment. The little one complied, aspiring: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... picture. Kate was at this time a lithe and graceful figure, slightly above the medium height, and possessing a great deal of "style;" in fact, young as she was, she had been for some time regarded as a model of fashion and deportment by all the aspiring young women within a radius of twenty miles. She was dressed on this evening in a gown of some thin, white material, the frilled hem of which failed by at least six inches to reach the floor, thereby displaying ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... vices of a great mind: ambition, the malady of every extensive genius,—and avarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth,—the other governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys of wine and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. The general run of men he looked on with contempt, and treated with cruelty when they opposed him. Nor was the rigor of his mind to be softened but with the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, by a sympathy congenial to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the various professions will be the appropriate spheres of activity for many aspiring young men. But for my disciples, I call on those very few, who, realising inner call, will devote their whole life with strengthened character and determined purpose to take part in that infinite struggle to win knowledge for its ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... chord—poplars shivering in sun and breeze, stationary cypresses as black as night, and tall campanili with the hot red shafts of glowing brick—adds just enough of composition to the landscape. Without too much straining of the allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring bars the upward effort of souls rooted in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds |
