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Ambition Quotes

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Ambition Quotes

“One inconvenience... may attend bold and arduous attempts: frequent failure may discourage. This evil, however, is not more pernicious than the slow proficiency which is the natural consequence of too easy tasks.”

MayEvilEasyNaturalAmbitionConsequenceTasksDiscouragingInconveniencePerniciousProficiencyNatural ConsequencesEasy Tasks
Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone
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“On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.”

WayIdeasCountryLightNaturalSimplePowerfulCitiesVirtueIgnoranceCommunicationAmbitionFundamentalsNoiseLimitationInnocenceAssociationContrastCentreHostileWorldliness
Book:The Country and the City
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“I was a reasonably good student in college ... My chief interests were scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type-a man like Hart Merriam, or Frank Chapman, or Hornaday, to-day.”

MenScienceInterestNaturalDoorsStudentsCollegeTypeAmbitionChiefsFrankDevotedMy AmbitionWilsonNatural HistoryGood StudentsHart
Book:Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt
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“There is a kind of grandeur and respect which the meanest and most insignificant part of mankind endeavor to procure in the little circle of their friends and acquaintance. The poorest mechanic, nay, the man who lives upon common alms, gets him his set of admirers, and delights in that superiority which he enjoys over those who are in some respects beneath him. This ambition, which is natural to the soul of man, might, methinks, receive a very happy turn; and, if it were rightly directed, contribute as much to a person's advantage, as it generally does to his uneasiness and disquiet.”

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Book:The spectator
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“To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.”

MenMindLooksStillsSoulNaturalForeverVirtueAmbitionGloryEternityShiningLook UpCarrie
Book:The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...
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“Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute - and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? The nature of your actions - and of your ambition - will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept.”

MindDifferentActionLawReligionUniverseNaturalAnswersAcceptingAmbitionMiracleAbsolutesChaosFirmRealmsStableUnpredictableNatural LawInexplicableFlux
Book:Philosophy: Who Needs It
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“In the older times it was seldom said to little girls, as it always has been said to boys, that they ought to have some definite plan, while they were children, what to be and do when they were grown up. There was usually but one path open before them, to become good wives and housekeepers. And the ambition of most girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well as boys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiar capabilities,--must have desired to cultivate and make use of their individual powers.”

WellsChildrenLittlesHas BeensSaidUseMotherGirlIndividualNaturalBoysPathWifePlansOughtAmbitionConsciousPeculiarCapabilityDefiniteFootstepsGood WifeHousekeepersIndividual Power
Book:A New England girlhood
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“But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means, than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed.”

MenMeanArtHandsYoungDesireWishNaturalPathYouthMastersAmbitionApproachExcellenceMereRewardsStormYoung ManLabourExecutionTerrifiedIndispensableToilImpatienceSlothTemptingFrivolousDisgustedSiegeEminenceExactnessCitadels
Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone
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“The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it put your whole soul into it-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.”

InspirationalWellsTwoSoulWholeHappinessSuccessLyingEnergyBitsInterestCan DoNaturalSimpleAbilityEffortPrinciplesAmbitionFindingsHappyBeing HappyPursuit Of HappinessTrue HappinessFinding HappinessFeeling HappyHappiness Is A ChoiceNatural AbilityGive 100 PercentRoad To HappinessMaximum Effort
Author:John D. Rockefeller III
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“Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.”

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Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“We should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust body, speech and mind. Stretching out in inconceivable nonaction, in the unstructured matrix, the actuality of emptiness, where the natural perfection of reality lies, we should gaze at the uncontrived sameness of every experience, all conditioning and ambition resolved with finality.”

ShouldMindBodyRealityLyingGamesNaturalMeditationSpeechAmbitionPerfectionCastsEmptinessConditioningStretchingSamenessActualityFettersFinality
Author:Longchenpa
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“The person who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed; you must have a larger ambition. There is no mystery in business success. If you do each day's task successfully, and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about, and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.”

IfsPersonsIdeasLawNaturalRichClearMysterySucceedAmbitionTasksOperationsEach DayBusiness SuccessGet RichMy Ambition
Author:John D. Rockefeller
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“The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.”

MenGivingFeelsEndsHomeDesireHumanityHoursLosesNaturalResultsEffectsAmbitionUltimateFamiliarUselessDimensionsEnterprisePrivacyLabourDisguiseAmusementShrinksPrudenceCheerfulnessOrnamentsIntervalsPromptsProsecutionSplendour
Book:The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with his life, and notes on his Lives of the poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In eleven volumes ...
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“The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”

PeopleKnowsGivingMindMayMeanCountryFactsAgePurposeNaturalShapesAmbitionDefeatTyrannyCivil RightsPossessedExhibitsPreventingPromptsPerversion
Book:The Real Thomas Jefferson
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“Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.”

ImportantPoliticalThreeInterestNaturalPowerfulEconomicSecurityAmbitionGoldImportanceHistoricalIncludingChinaOilNeighborRussiaEnormousGasConcentrationRegionsPrizeIranRepublicReservesTurkeysAsianStandpointMineralsNatural GasBalkans
Author:Zbigniew Brzezinski
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