“Men are naturally lazy, and require some great stimulus to goad their flagging ambitions and enable them to overcome the inertia which comes from ease and the consciousness of inherited wealth. Whatever lessens in a young man the feeling that he must make his way in the world cripples his chance of success. Poverty has ever been the priceless spur that has goaded man up to his own loaf.” MenWorldWayFeelingsYoungWealthChanceConsciousnessPovertyAmbitionOvercomingEaseYoung ManLazyStimulusPricelessSpursInertiaCripplesInherited Wealth Book:Rising in the World, Or Architects of Fate Source: Rising in the World, Or Architects of Fate
“Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.” SometimesStatesWould BeConsciousnessToo MuchGenerationsAmbitionMurderObjectivesJournalistNovelistsHeight1960sEmbarrassmentDrankCommonplaceBourgeoisMy GenerationAvant GardeStates Of ConsciousnessCarnivals Author:Lewis H. Lapham
“Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitionshe has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover's sense of the momentof crisis, and he knewhow costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it.” MenGrowthConsciousnessCourageGreaterLoversVictoryAmbitionCrisisInstinctDefeatProfitNapoleonic Author:Norman Mailer