Quotes & Sayings About Desire And Ambition

Humans are lonely creators. Humans always desire and yearn for others. Humans thirst for ambitions. When things don't go their way, they start thirsting for it even more. — Jeon In-hwa

The difference between greed and ambition is a greedy person desires things he isn't prepared to work for. — Habeeb Akande

The primary motivation in the world of television is fear. People are scared to death. Ambition and enthusiasm and interest and the desire to excel are secondary. Because fear is an enormous motivating force, many in the medium are afraid to make decisions, take chances, do anything innovative. — Sally Quinn

Ambition, as that passion is generally understood,- a strong desire to rise above others, to occupy the first place, - formed no part of Lafayette's character. In him the passion was nothing more than a constant and irresistible wish to do good. — Marquis De Lafayette

A creative writing workshop will contain students whose ambitions and abilities, whose conceptions of literature itself, are so diverse that what they have in common - the desire to write - could almost be considered meaningless. — Rachel Cusk

Greed, desire, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination - you have to watch everything. And they are all interconnected, remember. If greed disappears, then anger will disappear. If anger disappears, jealousy will disappear. If jealousy disappears, violence will disappear. If violence disappears, possessiveness will disappear. They are all intertwined. In fact, they are spokes of the same wheel, and the hub that supports them all is the ego. So watch the ways of the ego. — Rajneesh

I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist ... ..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, and I no longer aspired to fit in that world. I loved the paintings done by children, and my only desire was to do the same for my own pleasure. — Jean Dubuffet

I'm over the Oscar thing. I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive. I've seen it. — Bill Murray

No matter what face he wears, Satan has one overmastering ambition, one burning desire-to dethrone the Almighty and to place himself upon the highest throne of the universe. — Adrian Rogers

You haven't changed. You may say: 'I'm full of love, I'm full of truth, I'm full of knowledge, I'm full of wisdom.' I say: 'That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You are not serious.' — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, concupiscence, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him? — Blaise Pascal

At a minimum it must involve renouncing any desire or ambition to become wealthy or famous; fostering vertical solidarity between rich and poor as well as horizontal solidarity between consumers and producers; rendering effective assistance to marginalized groups in society such as the poor and immigrants; a shared commitment to traditional values, particularly with respect to sex and marriage, as well as a recognition of the importance of families and children; opposition to abortion; an emphasis on environmental stewardship and caring for creation; and a commitment to nonviolence. — Solidarity Hall

In my mind, a first date really boils down to selling what you have, what you almost have and what you wish you had. First, what you have: wit, humor, intelligence, beauty, confidence. Second, you want to convey that you have ambition and a desire to grow as a person but not talk yourself up too much - - basically what I almost have. And third, you have to reveal that you're human but not a high-maintenance hot mess. This requires being slightly exposed by showing that you don't have it all together, and there are things that you still want and need, or things you wish you had. Of course, all of this must be accomplished while not being too serious or too silly, and while looking particularly cute. Not to mention being mysterious enough to leave them wanting more. Dang, this dating thing is hard! — Megan Carson

Ambition is the desire to go forward and improve one's condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life of the individual and makes him see himself in another state. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To want that which is worth while and strive for it. To go on without looking back, reaching to that which gives satisfaction. — Marcus Garvey

If you have a burning ambition and desire, absolutely anything can be achieved. — Jahangir Khan

I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction. If — Philippa Gregory

It certainly inhibits a man's desire to change companies for a better job. Thus, it is at least a minor pressure against free-spirited enterprise. All the benefits exert pressure, too. There is nothing sinister about them, since admittedly they are for your own material comfort -- and isn't that supposed to be one of the goals of mankind? What happens is that, as the years go by, the temptation to strike out on your own or take another job becomes less and less. Gradually you become accustomed to the Utopian drift. Soon another inhibition may make you even more amenable. If you have been in easy circumstances for a number of years, you feel that you are out of shape. Even in younger men the hard muscle of ambition tends to go slack, and you hesitate to take a chance in the jungle again. — Alan Harrington

Like a goddess on her azure hill, the star of my ambition, the mistress of my dream; a thing apart, that we can worship, but not touch; a wild desire, that, in the madness of the thought, soars higher in its dignity, and leaves me weeping in the dust. — William Batchelder Greene

A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher. — Johann Georg Hamann

The difference between a confident person and an unconfident person is simply that the confident person acts on their ambitions and desires and doesn't let fear of failure stop them. — Katty Kay

What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings when they would walk into the movie theater and men's eyes turned toward her, that moment when he offered her to the world. What he loved in her was his power and his ambition to live. Even his desire, the deepest craving of his flesh, probably derived from this initial astonishment at possessing a lovely body, at mastering and humiliating it. — Albert Camus

The True Person governs by emptying the heart of desire and filling the belly with food, weakening ambitions and strengthening bones. — Laozi

**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.**
That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight
a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision.
[first-line bold by author]
[2002] p.23 — Gary Hamel

Now, again, he paused, and into the breach thus made, leapt Ambition, the harridan, and Poetry, the witch, and Desire of Fame, the strumpet; all joined hands and made of his heart their dancing ground. — Virginia Woolf

Nature is my religion. And my desire ... my ambition ... the great goal I wish to achieve is to take my readers with me into the heart of this Nature. I love it, and I feel that they must love it ... if I can only get the two acquainted. — James Oliver Curwood

When a man is occupied with striving to satisfy his desire and ambition, all his thoughts must be mortal. — Timaeus

She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her — Rebecca Miller

I believe at least in one of the chief tenets of the Christian faith
contentment with a lowly place. I am a doctor and I know that ambition
the desire to succeed
to have power
leads to most ills of the human soul. If the desire is realized it leads to arrogance, violence and final satiety; and if it is denied
ah! if it is denied
let all the asylums for the insane rise up and give their testimony! The are filled with human beings who were unable to face being mediocre, insignificant, ineffective and who therefore created for themselves ways of escape from reality so to be shut off from life itself forever. — Agatha Christie

Having this, we want that.
Owning some, we want more.
Standing here, we wish to be there.
If it's impossible, we struggle to make it happen.
Why are we like this? Why not be content with some, here, and now? Why is enough not enough?
Because humans are ambitious creatures not meant to be idle or fruitless. We strive to learn, to grow, to achieve, to amass; therefore, we will never be content. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. — Ambrose Bierce

Maura looks stunned, as though she's been slapped. "What about me? Don't you trust me?" She gives a hysterical little laugh. Tears are gathering in her blue eyes. "Let me guess: you think I'm reckless. 'Too easily ruled by my emotions,' Elena said. As though feeling things too deeply
wanting more for myself and girls like us
is so terrible! — Jessica Spotswood

I love the youth of the Church. I have said again and again that I think we have never had a better generation than this. How grateful I am for your integrity, for your ambition to train your minds and your hands to do good work, for your love of the word of the Lord, and for your desire to walk in paths of virtue and truth and goodness. — Gordon B. Hinckley

All should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy, and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Your man with a thin skin, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement is never a happy, and seldom a fortunate politician. — Anthony Trollope

My whole life I'd lived off the one wretched ambition that still possessed me: to be more than I was; to reject and despise everything that was in my reach and to set goals I was incapable of reaching; to chase after emotions I was incapable of feeling; to seek out adventures I couldn't live up to; to have a friendship that was no friendship, a love that was no love; ambitions yoked to a weak will, a will stuck in the mire of unfulfilled desire. — Mela Hartwig

So long as we do not know definitely what we want, our forces will be scattered, and so long as our forces are scattered, we will accomplish but little, or fail entirely. When we know what we want, however, and proceed to work for it with all the power and ability that is in us, we may rest assured that we will get it. When we direct the power of thinking, the power of will, the power of mental action, the power of desire, the power of ambition, in fact, all the power we possess on the one thing we want, on the one goal we desire to reach, it is not difficult to understand why success in a greater and greater measure must be realized. — Christian D. Larson

It is my earnest desire that some of you should carry on this scientific work and keep for your ambition the determination to make a permanent contribution to science. — Marie Curie

The majority of tragically fallen Christian leaders during the past ten to fifteen years have been baby boomers who felt driven to achieve and succeed in an increasingly competitive and demanding church environment. Most often their ambition has been a subtle and dangerous combination of their own dysfunctional personal needs and a certain measure of altruistic desire to expand the kingdom of God. However, because ambition is easily disguised in Christian circles and couched in spiritual language (the need to fulfill the Great Commission and expand the church), the dysfunctions that drive Christian leaders often go undetected and unchallenged until it is too late. — Gary L. McIntosh

Unassuming in manner, genial and kindly in his intercourse with his fellow-men, never showing impatience or irritation, devoid of personal ambition of the baser sort or of the slightest desire to exalt himself ... In the minds of those who knew him, the greatness of his intellectual achievements will never overshadow the beauty and dignity of his life.
[H.A. Burnstead's comments on the life of esteemed scientist J. Willard Gibbs] — Henry Andrews Bumstead

Our ambitions are bold and so must be our desire to change and evolve our culture. — Satya Nadella

I do feel that I have unfinished business in the Premier League and now is the right time to return. I considered all the other offers very carefully and I firmly believe that Chelsea is the best choice. They match my footballing ambitions with their hunger and desire to win trophies. — Cesc Fabregas

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man ... ? — Blaise Pascal

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it," said the expendable.
"Meaning I gave you what you wanted?"
"Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked. — Orson Scott Card

But God has the most fun with artists and writers: he inflames them with the desire to rival his own creations, then douses their overheated ambitions with a cold spray from the garden hose of reality. If they persist, he slams them to the ground and tweaks them on the proboscis for good measure. A fortunate few break free and prosper; the others lament the day they didn't become bank clerks. — Rick Bayan

Let some holy ambition invade our souls, so that, dissatisfied with mediocrity, we shall eagerly desire the highest things and shall toil with all our strength to obtain them, since we may if we wish. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

When I decided to run for Congress, I saw it as an opportunity to serve the South Jersey community that had become my home after signing to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. I didn't choose public service out of political ambition or a desire for power, and never once thought of making a career of it. — Jon Runyan

True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God. — Bill Wilson

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know. — Lao-Tzu

Driving by my ambitions, desire higher positions, to see eternally and my mission, to be more than just a rap musician. — Tupac Shakur

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition. — Adam Smith

Timothy's great value was that he was always willing to go anywhere; and in his hands a message was as safe as if Paul had delivered it himself. Others might be consumed with selfish ambition; but Timothy's one desire was to serve Paul and Jesus Christ. He is the patron saint of all those who are quite content with the second place, so long as they can serve. — William Barclay

With many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire - conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur. — Kenneth Waltz

As she grew older, she was aware of her changing position on mortality. In her youth, the topic of death was philosophical; in her thirties it was unbearable and in her forties unavoidable. In her fifties, she had dealt with it in more rational terms, arranging her last testament, itemizing assets and heirlooms, spelling out the organ donation, detailing the exact words for her living will. Now, in her sixties, she was back to being philosophical. Death was not a loss of life, but the culmination of a series of releases. It was devolving into less and less. You had to release yourself from vanity, desire, ambition, suffering, and frustration - all the accoutrements of the I, the ego. And if you die, you would disappear, leave no trace, evaporate into nothingness ... — Amy Tan

He was puzzled by his mood. Despite the beauty of his surroundings, he found it curiously disconcerting. The art was almost too good to be true. What was it saying about humanity, and how much was the Renaissance culpable of creating the myth of individual rather than collective achievement? Was this the beginning of the desire for individual fame and recognition that contradicted Christian humility and shared responsibility; licensing the modern notion of ambition and selfish aspiration? On — James Runcie

Every man has his secret desire, I suppose, and mine is someday to own a farm. — A.G. Street

Does one grow wise in increments? By fractioning a life and then summing it? By stacking sand? An infant, in his first sleepiness, must let go of the world; a man must learn to die. What comes between are the grains of sand. Ambition. Loss. Envy. Desire. Hatred. Love. Tenderness. Joy. Shame. Loneliness. Ecstasy. Ache. Surrender. Live long enough and you will solve them all. — Ethan Canin

I wanted to smell the guitars. It's hard to explain but they have a smell. And the best way I could ever describe it would be to say they smell like potential. Ambition and desire. If such things had a smell. — Barbara Hall

I was never appalled by myself. I felt a little bit uneasy about certain things. But honestly I've learned to love myself and to see that in the midst of all my ambition and desire to succeed and my search for approval, I do give things to people. I bring some sort of happiness to their lives. So I'm not so hard on myself anymore. — Madonna Ciccone

Life has a time limit. And we are changing all the time. So are our ambitions, desires, and purposes . . . The important thing is to find something that never changes in you. — Fumio Obata

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work. — Charles Babbage

Money was evil, beauty vain, and both were transitory. Ambition was pride, desire for gain was avarice, desire of the flesh was lust, desire for honor, even for knowledge and beauty, was vainglory. Insofar as these diverted man from seeking the life of the spirit, they were sinful. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. — Niccolo Machiavelli

it was the meaning of more than the game of pool, more than the five-by-ten-foot microcosm of ambition and desire. It seemed to him as if all men must know this because it is in every meeting and every act, in the whole gigantic hustle of men's lives. — Walter Tevis

Ambition is your own yoke, not His! And the lust of wealth, the desire for power, the craving for human love - all that is a yoke of your own making - and if you will wear it, it will gall you. There is more joy in being unknown than in being known and there is less care in having no wealth than in having much of it. We often go the wrong way to work in seeking true restfulness and happiness. — Jennifer Dukes Lee

What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power? — Thomas Higgons

A BURNING DESIRE TO BE, AND TO DO is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition. — Napoleon Hill

To be myself, to follow my desires to the best of my abilities. That's the only end worth shooting for. Success and failure lie beyond us, they may be signposts that direct us, but they are foolish goals in themselves. To truly be who I have been made to be, made myself to be, ah, that is the only mission worthy of all the life that flows within. — James Rozoff

Who has courage to say no again and again to desires, to despise the objects of ambition, who is a whole in himself, smoothed and rounded. — Horace

I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive. — Bill Murray

Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse - all of it slipped away. — Peter Hessler

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form. — James Weldon Johnson

The ambition of 'Ten Thousand Saints,' Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus. — Stacey D'Erasmo

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be- musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors- but "somebody": to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion — Anthony De Mello

Three and a half years in L.A. was enough for me. I would love to go back for short bursts if a film opportunity came up, but it's a unique place, and you can reach saturation point. For me it was a place where creative desire and ambition meets desperation. It's in the air; it's palpable - I just didn't want to be around that. — Darren Boyd

The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity. — Edward Gibbon

Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other. — Charles Caleb Colton

Polybius foresaw Rome's decadence. "All things are subject to decay and change," he wrote. "When a state, after having passed with safety through many and great dangers, arrives at the highest degree of power, and possesses an entire and undisputed sovereignty, it is manifest that the long continuance of prosperity must give birth to costly and luxurious manners, and that the minds of men will be heated with ambitious contests, and become too eager and aspiring in the pursuit of dignities. And as those evils are continually increased, the desire of power and rule, and the imagined ignominy of remaining in a subject state, will first begin to work the ruin of the republic; arrogance and luxury will afterwards advance it; and in the end the change will be completed by the people; when the avarice of some is found to injure and oppress them, and the ambition of others swells their vanity, and poisons them with flattering hopes. — Anonymous

A man who lives with intentions is bound to feel frustration. A man who lives with expectations is bound to feel frustrated because existence has no obligation to you. But if you live without intentions, without expectations, then miraculously you find that everything that you ever dreamed of is being fulfilled. The moon is reflected in the lake - the lake never asked it, the moon never intended it. Existence goes on spontaneously. Don't bring your desire, your ambition and your expectation; they are the disturbing points. They create a chaos in your mind. — Rajneesh

When there is no thought. no desire, no ambition, in that state of no-mind truth descends in you - or ascends in you. As far as the dimension of truth is concerned both are the same, because in the world of the innermost subjectivity height and depth mean the same. It is one dimension: the vertical dimension. Mind moves horizontally, no-mind exists vertically. The moment the mind ceases to function - that's what meditation is all about: cessation of the mind, total cessation of the mind - your consciousness becomes vertical; depth and height are yours. — Rajneesh

The other thing that's happened with writing is that I'm not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you're not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. "Be ambitious," he said, "for the work." Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway. — Marsha L. Larsen

Content has a kindly influence on the soul of man, in respect of every being to whom he stands related. It extinguishes all murmuring, repining, and ingratitude toward that Being who has allotted us our part to act in the world. It destroys all inordinate ambition; gives sweetness to the conversation, and serenity to all the thoughts; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire of them. — Joseph Addison

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination. — John Stuart Mill

You're aware there are things you once valued and were proud of in yourself, but they exist at a remove now, because they're overwhelmed by the question of whether they would be good and acceptable to him. Morality, ambition, desire, pleasure all take a backseat to, What would he think of this, and how shall I describe it to him? All you care about is maximizing his impression of you. — Chris Kraus

It is my ambition as a Dichter to maintain, for a small number of people who may happen to understand me and be accessible to my influence, a transcendent life, or at least the desire for it, in the midst of the money-and-war-culture which the world has become. — Hermann Hesse

Many pray for the power of God. More every year. Those prayers sound powerful, sincere, godly, and without ulterior motive. Hidden under such prayer and fervor, however, are ambition, a craving for fame, the desire to be considered a spiritual giant. The person who prays such a prayer may not even know it, but dark motives and desires are in his heartin your heart. — Gene Edwards

The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point - for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness. — Lawrence Durrell

I've experienced love and ambition and desire in my life, but never in the same way as in a family. — Claire Denis

Stevenson had noble ideas
as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered. — Garry Wills

When you meet the one. It just clicks. Clicking is important in a relationship. When you click, you share the same passion and worldviews, ambitions and dreams. You are willing to share your inner thoughts, fears, desires and secrets. When you click, your partner makes you comfortable in your skin, he or she knows what you need even you're quiet, knows when to give advice and when to just listen. When you click, you allow your partner to steadily be what they desire to be, while you be a steady presence — Rita Zahara

Why did we sleep together, dubiously queer girls that we were? Desire is fluid, but I think Jen and I fucked each other because we wanted to stand by ourselves. Were we not sweet enough for men? Were they put off by our ambition, how fast we talked, how needy we grew? We wouldn't contort ourselves for their desires. Our faces were the same size as we kissed. We were equals. We needed no masculine protection. We would protect each other. We could protect ourselves. — Molly Crabapple

When both privileges and the disqualifications of class have been abolished and men have shattered the bonds which once held them immobile, the idea of progress comes naturally into each man's mind; the desire to rise swells in every heart at one, and all men want to quit their former social position. Ambition becomes a universal feeling. — Alexis De Tocqueville

If you get someone right out of college - and I meet a lot of them - you're not going to get a lot of experience at all, so you have to feel the ambition and desire, which is based on a lot of factors. — Mickey Drexler

My ambition is limited to the desire to capture something transient, and yet, this ambition is excessive. — Berthe Morisot

No, it wasn't quite true that John had no conscience at all. Everyone had one. But there were many voices in his head that had an easier time reaching him: his ambition, his desire for fame and success - and for revenge. — Cornelia Funke

I don't like laid back. I like action. This city has a constant desire to achieve. Just the way I also want to. My friends say that I have ambitions the size of the Himalayas but the desire to do so is the size of a pea. I don't believe them. Someday they will change their opinions. Today is a starting point. I can feel it. — Aditi Bose

Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring. — Horace Mann

Waiting to be discovered, hoping to be seen, wishing someone else would do the work, wanting to make it big while dreaming of being rich and famous just like your heroes is submissive, passive, foolish, weak, and ineffective. Take your desire for your dreams, your goals, and your ambition, then make them fuel for the fire to light your ass up, to get to work and on the path to make it happen. — Loren Weisman

There are some who become spies for money, or out of vanity and megalomania, or out of ambition, or out of a desire for thrills. But the malady of our time is of those who become spies out of idealism. — Max Lerner

There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess. — John Ruskin

To wish is of little account; to succeed you must earnestly desire; and this desire must shorten thy sleep. — Ovid