Aspire High Quotes & Sayings

Aspire to high standards, expect strong results, offer self praise, and stack your confidence. — Lorii Myers

Aspire higher to attain excellence in whatever you do. But be careful when you reach the peak, where the only way is the way downwards. Maintain your standard! — Israelmore Ayivor

I was all-state in four sports in New Jersey, but sometimes I couldn't get served at a restaurant two blocks from my high school. There were no job opportunities then ... the only thing a black youth could aspire to be was a bellboy or a pullman or an elevator operator, or, maybe, a teacher. There was a time when all we had was black baseball. — Monte Irvin

God wants to show such people how strong He really is (2 Chronicles 16:9). But not all who aspire to leadership are willing to pay such a high personal price. — J. Oswald Sanders

Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you. — Miyamoto Musashi

Some may think there is danger of setting too high a standard of action. I have heard teachers contend that a child will learn to write much faster by having an inferior copy, than by imitating one which is comparatively perfect; 'because,' say they, 'a pupil is liable to be discouraged if you give him a perfect copy; but if it is only a little in advance of his own, he will take courage from the belief that he shall soon be able to equal it.' I am fully convinced, however, that this is not so. The more perfect the copy you place before the child, provided it be written, and not engraved, the better. For it must always be possible in the nature of things, for the child to imitate it; and what is not absolutely impossible, every child may reasonably be expected to aspire after, on the principle, that whatever man has done, man may do. — Anonymous

O youth whose hope is high, Who dost to Truth aspire, Whether thou live or die, O look not back nor tire. — Robert Bridges

My current fear is that the message being sent by the level of vitriol surrounding Gillard's flawed leadership (but tell me whose wasn't flawed) is being heard by Australian women and girls loud and clear. And the message is: 'Don't aspire to high office,sweetheart, because we'll flay you alive.' — Jane Caro

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

For eager teachers seized my youth, pruned my faith and trimmed my fire. Showed me the high, white star of truth, there bade me gaze and there aspire. — Matthew Arnold

You will never know how high you can climb until you reach the top. — K.L. Toth

Yes I have done it all. Tested the shallow waters, swam through the dangerous tides, met strangers, seen friends turn strangers, taken risks to achieve my goals, persevered to out do myself each time, rose high, fell hard, learned to climb, learned to dream and in dreaming learned to relate to reality.
I have earned respect, achieved things very young, believed in my potential, questioned it too but through it all I have never stopped to aspire. I am a human and I must adapt to the changing seasons, learn new skills and master them all.
Now as I stand and look up, I see a heap of laurels yet to achieve and chest of mysteries yet to resolve. I am not one in the crowd. I'll forever be the one whom they could never be — Adhish Mazumder

If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker. — Mahatma Gandhi

A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand — Wangari Maathai

There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice
in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire. — Jacqueline Carey

Only a few of us retain a childlike wonder throughout our lives. A typical life's journey is one with increasing knowledge but decreasing mental and physical adaptability. Our mindset unknowingly gets trapped in conceptions and categories that we create. As Aristotle observed, as we grow older, we aspire to nothing great and exalted and crave the mere necessities and comforts of existence. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. — Ted Chu

To me there is no more tragic sight than the average missionary. ... We have given so much, yet not the one thing that counts; we aspire so high, and fall so low; we suffer so much, but so seldom with Christ; we have done so much and so little will remain; we have known Christ in part, and have so effectively barricaded our hearts against His mighty love, which surely He must yearn to give His disciples above all people. — Amy Carmichael

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually [essentially?] happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen). — Leopold Von Ranke

The esteemed Reverend Rufus Griswold is everything I aspire to be, though I fear I shall never soar so quite as high as he
-from his resignation letter to Graham's Magazine — Edgar Allan Poe

I'm only a housewife, I'm afraid." How often do we hear this shocking admission. I'm afraid when I hear it I feel very angry indeed. Only a housewife: only a practitioner of one of the two most noble professions (the other one is that of a farmer); only the mistress of a huge battery of high and varied skills and custodian of civilization itself. Only a typist, perhaps! Only a company director, or a nuclear physicist; only a barrister; only the President! When a woman says she is a housewife she should say it with the utmost pride, for there is nothing higher on this planet to which she could aspire. — John Seymour

I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that. — Edward Hirsch

For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. — Marco Rubio

Too many people glorified small-town America, making it seems like a Normal Rockwell painting, but the reality was something else entirely. With the exception of doctors and lawyers or people who owned their own business, there were no high-paying jobs in Oriental, or any other small town for that matter. And while is was in many way an ideal place to raise young children, there was little for young adults to aspire to.There weren't, nor would there ever be, middle management positions in small towns, nor was there much to do on the weekends, or even new people to meet — Nicholas Sparks

For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things. — Shepard Fairey

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? — Matthew Arnold

British audiences tend to want to see their own lives reflected on TV, whereas American audiences are quite aspirational and enjoy high-concept shows that show them lives that are perhaps slightly more exciting than they aspire to. — Adam Rayner

I don't aspire to have high approval ratings. I aspire, in light of my two predecessors, to be the most honest governor I can be. I'd rather focus on honesty than popularity. — Pat Quinn

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones
those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. — Susan Sontag

I used to believe in the system that I was born into: aspire, acquire, consume, get famous and glamorous, get high and mighty, get paid and laid. — Russell Brand

Rated "success in a high-paying career or profession" as important to their lives.10 A recent survey of Millennials11 found that women were just as likely to describe themselves as ambitious as men. Although this is an improvement, even among this demographic, the leadership ambition gap remains. Millennial women are less likely than Millennial men to agree that the statement "I aspire — Sheryl Sandberg

We don't like checklists. They can be painstaking. They're not much fun. But I don't think the issue here is mere laziness. There's something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us - those we aspire to be - handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. — Atul Gawande