Aspiration Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes, in that darkness, there is a single act of love, some selfless gesture, an aspiration, and we see that it's not been all waste, all hopeless, and we can ... well ... go on. — John L'Heureux

Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother. That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on earth. Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible tribute ... To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I aspire. To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest object of my life. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Unlike perfume, handbags are visible on the body, and--like Air Jordans for teenagers--give the wearer the chance to brandish the logo and publicly declare her status or aspiration. — Dana Thomas

The outsiders stood always in awe in front of what they had surnamed the Celestial City with Mighty Walls. The great mystery that cloaked its very foundations kept impelling the youth of Crotona, as well as those of the adjacent cities, to seek admittance. In spite of the difficult rules of the Master, curiosity goaded many to venture inside its secrecy, with a passionate aspiration to discover the unknown. Yet, to enroll, young men and women should be introduced by their parents. Sometimes, it was one of the assigned Masters of the Pythagorean Society who assumed the introduction. At the massive wooden gated entrance, one could admire the marble statue of Hermes-Enoch, the father of the spiritual laws. A cubical stone formed its stall where a skillful hand had carved the words: No entry to the vulgar — Karim El Koussa

Audacious faith is not passive. Neither is audacious prayer. Every aspiration you have in prayer needs an accompanying action. Otherwise you're not really praying. You're just pontificating.
You do the natural. Trust God for the super. — Steven Furtick

From a still wider and more comprehensive point of view, universal life itself appears to us as a struggle between multiplicity and unity - a labor and an aspiration towards union. We seem to sense that - whether we conceive it as a divine Being or as a cosmic energy - the Spirit working upon and within all creation is shaping it into order, harmony, and beauty, uniting all beings (some willing but the majority as yet blind and rebellious) with each other through links of love, achieving - slowly and silently, but powerfully and irresistibly - the Supreme Synthesis. — Roberto Assagioli

When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces. When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free. Solzhenitsyn — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The aspiration to save the world is a morbid phenomenon of today's youth. — Marilyn Manson

Without aspirations for a better existence, you're stuck in the mud and going nowhere. — Kimora Lee Simmons

Respect is the lifeblood of progress, and the safe harbour of humanity's great aspirations — Bryant McGill

Desire, liberated from its ties to the ego, realizes that it has no other aspiration than the fullness of Mahamudra and, as it sees in the same impulse that this plenitude is innate and limitless, it no longer aspires to any realization whatsoever. There is no longer anything but intimate vibration, continuous sacred tremoring, and the absence of localization in time and space. — Daniel Odier

Millions upon millions of people came here full of hope and aspiration to this extraordinary land of liberty and opportunity, and helped build the United States. So the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely critical to the story of America. — Simon Winchester

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to. — Kahlil Gibran

We never know what we can be or do until the need is there and we are tested by it. — Terry Brooks

Once spun,
The silken thread of all our aspirations
Remains intact,
It can never be broken. — Scott Hastie

A country scratching a lazy irritation at sagging doorjambs and late trains, whose greatest attribute is a collective, smelly tolerance, where a chap will put up with almost everything, which means he won't care about anything enough to get out of a chair.A country of public insouciance and private, grubby guilt, where you can believe anything as long as you don't believe it too fervently. A country where the highest aspiration is for a quiet life. — A.A. Gill

The individual and social instincts, - the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being. — Emma Goldman

Cavity embalming has the same general purpose as arterial embalming: you take the old fluids out and put new fluids in, to kill bacteria and halt decomposition long enough for a viewing and a funeral. But whereas arterial embalming used the body's natural circulatory system to make the job easy, cavity embalming involved a lot of individual organs and unconnected spaces that had to be dealt with one by one. We accomplished this with a tool called a trocar - basically a long, bladed nozzle attached to a vacuum. We used the trocar to puncture a body and suck out the gunk, a process called 'aspiration', and then once we'd sucked everything out we cleaned the trocar and attached it to a different tube, so it could drizzle in another chemical cocktail similar to the one we put in the arteries. — Dan Wells

At that point where you have decided to upgrade from aspiration to expectation and have begun to visualize an outcome, something incredibly important has happened, you have committed to the process of change. — Lorii Myers

It is no coincidence that "aspiration" means both hope and the act of breathing. — Ted Chiang

A 'normal person' is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

As for my own religious practice, I try to live my life pursuing what I call the Bodhisattva ideal. According to Buddhist thought, a Bodhisattva is someone on the path to Buddhahood wo dedicates themselves entirely to helping all other sentient beings towards release from suffering. The word Bodhisattva can best be understood by translating the Bodhi and Sattva separately: Bodhi means the understanding or wisdom of the ultimate nature of reality, and a Sattva is someone who is motivated by universal compassion. The Bodhissatva ideal is thus the aspiration to practise infinite compassion with infinite wisdom. releasing sentient beings from suffering. — Dalai Lama XIV

Men and women alike possess the qualities which make a guardian; they differ only in their comparative strength or weakness. Obviously. And those women who have such qualities are to be selected as the companions and colleagues of men who have similar qualities and whom they resemble in capacity and in character? Very true. And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits? They ought. Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning music and gymnastic to the wives of the guardians - to that point we come round again. Certainly not. The law which we then enacted was agreeable to nature, and therefore not an impossibility or mere aspiration; and the contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality a violation of nature. That appears to be true. We — Plato

Well, as you've said, we cannot expect the people of China not to want to progress, so if you have an opportunity to progress, to develop your economy to a world class economy, it's an aspiration that is natural and that, I welcome. — Sellapan Ramanathan

The recurrence during the eighteenth century Enlightenment of the aspiration to be the 'Newton of the moral sciences' testifies to the prestige not just of celestial mechanics, but of the 'experimental method' more generally. — Stefan Collini

We must not, however, be like the leaders of the great romantic revolt who, in their eagerness to get rid of the husk of convention, disregarded also the humane aspiration. — Irving Babbitt

God requires a faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given us to do, rather than the most ardent aspiration to things to which we are not called. — Saint Francis De Sales

Sad that our finest aspiration
Our freshest dreams and meditations,
In swift succession should decay,
Like Autumn leaves that rot away. — Alexander Pushkin

A sense of solemn aspiration comes upon us as we view the mountain. We are uplifted. The entire scale of being is raised. Our outlook on life seems all at once to have been heightened. And not only is there this sense of elevation: we seem purified also. Meanness, pettiness, paltriness seem to shrink away abashed at the sight of that radiant purity. — Francis Younghusband

Progressives must not portray all abortions as tragedies ... Senator Hillary Clinton, in a 2005 speech commendable for setting forth a prochoice, pro-prevention, pro-family agenda, took the aspiration a step in the wrong direction when she called for policy changes so that abortion 'does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances. — Dawn Johnsen

Speaking for the nation as a whole entails understanding and feeling the pain, as well as understanding the aspiration of the different cultural, social and political make-up of the nation. — David Blunkett

The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'. — James C. Scott

The specific is not exclusive: it lacks the aspiration to totality. — Theodor Adorno

Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration. — Dorothy Dunnett

Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. — H.P. Lovecraft

Live through it or grow from it. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

Intolerance of oppression, the desire to be free and develop one personality to its full limits, is not enough to make one an anarchist. That aspiration towards unlimited freedom, if not tempered by a love for mankind and by the desire that all should enjoy equal freedom, may well create rebels who soon become exploiters and tyrants. — Errico Malatesta

Caine wanted to be a doctor," Serena recalled with an innocent smile. "At least,that's what he told all the little girls."
"It was a natural aspiration," Caine defended himself, lifting his hand to his mother's knee while his arm held Diana firmly against him.
"Grant used a different approach," Shelby recalled. "I think he was fourteen when he talked Dee-Dee O'Brian into modeling for him-in the nude."
"That was strictly for the purpose of art," he countered when Gennie lifted a brow at him. "And I was fifteen."
"Life studies are an essential part of any art course," Gennie said as she started to draw again. "I remember one male model in particular-" She broke off as Grant's eyes narrowed. "Ah,that scowl's very natural,Grant,try not to lose it. — Nora Roberts

Clasped in my embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I ever had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own ... my love of whom was founded on a rock! — Charles Dickens

The moral high ground to which I aspired had turned into a slippery slope. — Alfred Alcorn

The human condition ... is defined by the aspiration to always supersede oneself, which in turn requires nonconformity. — Pablo Antonio Cuadra

We need to stop and ask, "Can I realize my deepest aspiration if I pursue this path?" "What is really preventing me from taking the path I most deeply desire?" DEVELOPING — Thich Nhat Hanh

The attentions of Wilkie Mackenzie were a conquest, an aspiration, a dream. The fresh memory of all those women, batting their eyelashes coquettishly, it boiled in my veins. One in particular. And Wilkie looked almost amused, now that his own jealousy had eased. "Are you jealous, my love? — Juliette Miller

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. — Robert Louis Stevenson

There is no better satisfaction than to see your children make your dreams theirs, and achieve them on their terms. — Murad S. Shah

If we understood it, the silence of Christ is the most eloquent of all appeals. Can you remember when you used to hear Him - when the words of the Book and the preacher used to move you in church, when the singing awoke aspiration, when the Sabbath was holy ground, when the Spirit of God strove with you? And is that all passed of passing away? — James Stalker

Man, having an ideal before him of that which he ought to be, and is not, and acting as though he possessed the character he ought to have, but has not, comes, by the very virtue of his aspiration, to possess the character he imagines. — William Batchelder Greene

The wish to pass something on to your children is about the most basic, human and natural aspiration there is. — George Osborne

Here's the rub. Leadership can be learned; however, not everyone wants to learn it, and not all those who learn about leadership master it. Why? Because becoming the very best requires a strong belief that you can learn and grow, an intense aspiration to excel, the determination to challenge yourself constantly, the recognition that you must engage the support of others, and the devotion to practice deliberately. Moreover, the best leaders realize that no matter how good they might be, they always can be even better, and are open to learning how to do so.4 — James M. Kouzes

If you take the conflicts we are used to dealing with, race over the years in America, and you combine that with the desire or aspiration to political power or taking power from other people, which is what politics is all about, you end up with a lot more friction than you would normally see with just straight-ahead politics. — Gwen Ifill

Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we're having
a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when all the urgent reading, whatever that might be, has been done. We never arrive at that point, needless to say ... — Nick Hornby

Surely among the many outlandish successes of AMRV is that it has eradicated from human beings our original sin: hope. But I don't have AMRV, which means I still suffer from the cruelest disease of our species, terminal aspiration. — John Green

If you will but aspire
You will attain to all that you desire.
Before an atom of such need the Sun
Seems dim and mirky by comparison.
It is life's strength, the wings by which we fly
Beyond the further reaches of the sky. — Farid Al-Din Attar

In a world of danger and trial, peace is our deepest aspiration. — John F. Kennedy

I realised I got anxious because my true aspiration wasn't to become the chief of a multi-billion dollar, multi-national company that created widgets or some shit. — S.A. Tawks

I want to have the illegitimate child of independent film making and the budget to make it. That's my aspiration. — Duncan Jones

In our towns and cities they will continue to be born, in our communities they will go on to be nurtured & radicalised & from within our neighbourhoods they will terrorise & murder our citizens including women & children in their attempt to destroy the very fabric & order of our civilised society. They are influenced by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge is their power, martyrdom in the name of their God and prophet is their aspiration & so it is critical that we waste no time & learn more about them & this ideology they follow before we can even begin to eradicate this chilling & growing endemic Islamic faith based terrorism'. — Cal Sarwar

An ideal is an unselfish aspiration. Its purpose is the general welfare not only of this but of future generations. It is a thing of the spirit. It is a generous and humane desire that all men may share equally in a common good. Our ideals are the cement, which binds human society. — Herbert Hoover

When a man's life is destroyed or damaged by some wound or privation of soul or body, which is due to other men's actions or negligence, it is not only his sensibility that suffers but also his aspiration toward the good. Therefore there has been sacrilege towards that which is sacred in him. — Simone Weil

Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration. — Charles Dudley Warner

If we want kids with 'aspiration', we need to give them something to aspire to. — Owen Jones

A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration. — Kurt Lewin

The aspiration of all writers should be to avoid leaving fissures in their work, to make sure that everything is properly secured so readers won't find a single toehold for their suspicions. — Marcos Giralt Torrente

Poverty is not just about income: it's about aspiration. It's not just about giving people a couple of extra pounds a week, welcome though that is. — Theresa May

One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself Which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? the debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature? For you, O broker, there is not other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain ...
I believe in what the Germans term Ehrfurcht: reverence for things one cannot understand. Faust's error was an aspiration to understand, and therefore master, things which, by God or by nature, are set beyond the human compass. He could only achieve this at the cost of making the achievement pointless. Once again, it is exactly what modern man has done. — Robert Aickman

I think for some people real success would mean having all the money in the world and having everyone love you every minute of the day. I don't know if that's really my aspiration. I just want to keep doing this. I just want to keep finding new ways and new paths and new territory. Every time I get to do it, it feels like freedom. — Stacey D'Erasmo

Oprah's aspiration to inspire her audience with hope - elaborated on her TV show, in her magazine, and on her website - is hardly ignoble. — Lee Siegel

If I am alive this is my book, and my father lives now in the afterlife that is a book, a thing not vague or virtual but something you can hold and feel and smell because to my mind heaven like life must be a thing sensual and real. And my book will be a river and have the Salmon literal and metaphoric leaping inside it and be called History of the Rain, so that his book does not perish, and you will know my book exists because of him and because of his books and his aspiration to leap up, to rise. You will know that I found him in his books, in the covers his hands held, the pages they turned, in the paper and the print, but also in the worlds those books contained, where now I have been and you have been too. You will know the story goes from the past to the present and into the future, and like a river flows. — Niall Williams

The understanding of our time should become our desire and aspiration — Sunday Adelaja

Ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration. — George MacDonald

When I was younger, I had a much better connection between words and music. Somewhere along the way, I had kind of an aspiration to disconnect them, to just kind of go into a totally musical world. — Edgar Meyer

I've been playing piano my whole life, but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made, really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. — Caio Fonseca

To write out the precepts again, we contend with them, and keep them; we build our humanity, and keep our humanity alive ... Thay has named the precepts 'wonderful' ... Wonderful because they can protect us, and show us how to live a joyous life, an interesting, adventurous, deep, large life, and how to be with one another, and with animals, plants, and all the Earth and universe. Wonderful because when we practice the precepts, we existentially become humane, we embody loving kindness ... Standing in the midst of burning ruins, I was glad that I knew the precepts. Though I kept their tenets imperfectly, even in aspiration I created some invisible good that could not be destroyed ... The Five Wonderful Precepts give clear and simple directions to finding that life. In devastation, I have blueprints for making home anew (90-92).
For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts — Maxine Hong Kingston

It is only through meditation that we can get lasting peace, divine peace. If we meditate soulfully in the morning and receive peace for only one minute, that one minute of peace will permeate our whole day. And when we have a meditation of the highest order, then we really get abiding peace, light and delight. We need meditation because we want to grow in light and fulfill ourselves in light. If this is our aspiration, if this is our thirst, then meditation is the only way. — Sri Chinmoy

Life's aspirations come in the guise of children. — Rabindranath Tagore

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and dificult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers. — Sri Aurobindo

For many feverish years he was burdened with the sensation, an ancient one to be sure, that the incredible sprawl of human history was no more than a pathetically partial record of an infinitely vast and shadowed chronicle of universal metamorphoses. How much greater, then, was the feeling that his own pathetic history formed a practically invisible fragment of what itself was merely an obscure splinter of the infinite. Somehow he needed to excarcerate himself from the claustral dungeon cell of his life. In the end, however, he broke beneath the weight of his aspiration. And as the years passed, the only mystery which seemed worthy of his interest, and his amazement, was that unknown day which would inaugurate his personal eternity, that incredible day on which the sun simply would not rise, and forever would begin. — Thomas Ligotti

Even goats may have starlight in their eyes. — Robert W. Service

I think Oprah who is the height of aspiration and inspiration recognizes something in me that is germane. — Rosie O'Donnell

Every temptation that is resisted, every evil thought that is curbed, every desire that is subdued, every bitter word that is withheld, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sublime thought that is cultivated, adds to the development of will-force, good character, and attainment of eternal bliss and immortality. — Sivananda

The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow. — Samuel Beckett

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond who you were. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

There is new hope among people that this dispensation can fulfill their aspirations. — Narendra Modi

For you, o broker, there is no other principle but arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness - it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream. — Theodore Roosevelt

Multi- polarisation has become an inevitable trend in the process of shaping a global political pattern and has been widely welcomed by the international community as it reflects the common interests and aspiration of the overwhelming majority of countries. — Li Peng

Inspiration follows aspiration. — Rabindranath Tagore

Divine desperateness is the beginning of spiritual awakening because it gives rise to the aspiration for God-realisation. — Meher Baba

A Woman who let out a Sigh Outside a Mansion, should Never ask her Husband Why He Works Late — Vineet Raj Kapoor

You're in a movie because you're appealing and because you represent the aspiration, the fantasy, the ideal. — Rachel Ward

Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. — Frank Gaffney

You have to have a big vision and take very small steps to get there. You have to be humble as you execute but visionary and gigantic in terms of your aspiration. In the Internet industry, it's not about grand innovation, it's about a lot of little innovations: every day, every week, every month, making something a little bit better. — Jason Calacanis

It is only the fools who keep straining at high C all their lives. — Charles Dudley Warner

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question. — Kingsley Amis

The vision of the leader becomes the aspiration of the people. The impact is incredible. — John C. Maxwell

Negative thoughts and emotions are what obstruct our most basic aspiration - to be happy and to avoid suffering. When we act under their influence, we become oblivious to the impact our actions have on others: they are thus the cause of our destructive behavior both toward others and to ourselves. — Dalai Lama XIV

Home is more than a house. It is a sacred location, a place of aspiration and dreams, of learning and habit, of relationships and heart. Home is the geography of our souls. — Diana Butler Bass

Core passions and aspirations should be consistent and in sync. — Lorii Myers