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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.”

Ifs Way Want Writing Book Happens Special Ambition

Author:Michael Lewis

“Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.”

Writing Book Whole Ambition Pages Sentences Cursed

Author:Joseph Joubert

“I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an armchair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.”

Source: The Best of Sherlock Holmes

“It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.”

Thinking Book Ends Interest Heard Advice Information Pure Ambition Graves Reverence Flattery Maxims Artifice Counsellors

Book:The Rambler

Source: The Rambler

“In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone.”

Firsts Stills Book Certain Ambition Reign Offended Emperor Resentful Presumptuous Upstart High Ambition

Author:Murasaki Shikibu

“It took me some time to learn that although every one secretly cherishes the ambition to be 'put in a book,' no one is ever satisfied with anything save incense, butter, and honey, unrelieved by salt or spice.”

Book Ambition Satisfied Cherish Honey Salt Spices Incense

Author:Gertrude Atherton

“My ambition was to embrace those general qualities that Ernest Hemingway, a former newspaperman, once said should be present in all good books: 'the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.'”

People Should Said Book Quality Sorrow Ambition Embrace Weather Former Ecstasy Remorse Good Book My Ambition

Author:Pete Hamill

“Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex.”

“The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.”

Book Sometimes Virtue Objects Exercise Ambition Letters Absolutes Passages Linked Archetype Passage Of Time Platonic

Author:Jorge Luis Borges

“I want to see all the countries in the world and learn all the languages. I want to have thousands of friends and I want all my friends to be different. I want to play six instruments. I want to be the best in the world at two things. I want to be a great athlete and I want to be a great surgeon. I need to practice very hard every day. I need to sleep as little as possible. I need to read at least one major book every week. And I need to remember that my seventy years are going to go by too quickly.”

“At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book. ...I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ...So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison.”

Writing Book Age Lasts Father White Half Our Lives Produce Son Ambition Worthy Titles Queens Sat Brown Etc Comparison Toms Desks Victoria Bookshelves

Author:Rheta Childe Dorr

“You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

World Book Remember Nations Pleasure Known Drink Ambition Pursuit Vanity Beer Despise Savages Indolence

Book:Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression

Source: Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression

“The library furnished our dreams, helped us shape our ambitions, made up people of books and ideas and grand designs.”

People Made Book Ideas Dream Design Shapes Ambition Library Our Dreams

Author:Anne Rice

“The early commentators who put down the pre-presidential Roosevelt as an empty-headed young lightweight, all ambition and no talent, now seem comically wrong to a modern book-reading, movie-going, television-watching, legend-loving American public conditioned to think of him as one of the presidential giants on the order of Washington and Lincoln.”

Thinking Book Seems Young Order Reading Modern Talent Television Ambition Empty Presidential Giants Legends Book Reading Commentators Television Watching

Author:Russell Baker

“I've always believed that poetry must speak of realities as least as complicated as those spoken of in prose. I've read books of poems, even single poems, which are, for me, at least the equivalent of a short story or a novel. Martin Amis, in an interview with Saul Bellow in the early eighties, quotes Bellow asking, "Why not address 'the mysterious circumstance of being', say what it's like to be alive at this time, on this planet?" This has been and still is my ambition.”

Book Reality Speak Novel Circumstances Ambition Complicated Mysterious Prose Short Story Always Believe My Ambition

Author:Lawrence Joseph

“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”

Writing Book Whole Reading Crazy Ten Ambition Sentences Thrive My Ambition Brevity

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“The aphorism, the apothegm, in which I am the first among the Germans to be a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book.”

Firsts Doe Book Form Masters Ten Ambition Eternity Sentences Aphorism My Ambition

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.”

Men Book Creation Objects Ambition Illusion Errors Persistent Fidelity Indignation Inanimate Objects

Author:Joseph Conrad

“I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.”

Ifs Want Writing Years Art Said Stills Book Ends Play Wanted Sound Students Ten Ambition Music Is Years Ago Okay Track Novelists Fifteen Amazed Playwright Fifteen Years Dead Ends Art Students

Book:Making History

Source: Making History

“...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”

Book Soul Whole Form Energy Week Streets Drug Ambition Buried Fierce Cocaine Holmes Bakers Bohemian Old Books Baker Street

Book:Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.”

People Way Trying Littles Book Hard Grows Enjoy Chance Growing Up Ambition Library Corners Copies Shelves Ants My Ambition Vancouver Shelf Life Reykjavik

Book:A Tale of Love and Darkness

Source: A Tale of Love and Darkness

“I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.”

Ifs Book Character Able Action Perfect Careers Happened Example Mines Lucky Ambition Surprise Comic Broads Surprising Comic Book Detectives Thrillers Gary Edgy Baddies

Author:Benedict Cumberbatch

“I never expected to be in the papers. I personally never expected to be in the papers. The height of my ambition for these books was, well frankly, to get reviewed. A lot of children's books don't even get reviewed.. forget good review, bad review. Personally, no, I never expected to be in the papers so it's an odd experience when it happens to you .”

Wells Children Book Happens Success Forget Paper Ambition Expected Odd Height Reviews Papers My Ambition Children's Books Bad Reviews

Author:J. K. Rowling

“I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.”

People Thinking Want Writing I Can Book Young Media Fame Ambition Competition Strive Great Book Young Writers

Author:Zadie Smith

“It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books. [] It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books and he died.”

Made Book Individual Effort Ambition Died Aim Leaving Refuse Sentences Bent Printed My Ambition Story Of My Life Epitaph Printed Books

Book:Selected letters of William Faulkner

Source: Selected letters of William Faulkner

“THE NAME OF THE WIND has everything fantasy readers like, magic and mysteries and ancient evil, but it's also humorous and terrifying and completely believable. As with all the very best books in our field, it's not the fantasy trappings (wonderful as they are) that make this novel so good, but what the author has to say about true, common things, about ambition and failure, art, love, and loss.”

Art Book Evil Names Loss Common Fantasy Novel Wonderful Magic Mystery Fields Wind Reader Ambition Humorous Ancient Believable Love And Loss Common Things Name Of The Wind Art Love

Author:Tad Williams

“Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date”