My Aspiration Quotes & Sayings

My designs and labors and aspirations are my only friends. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

I stand on the shoulders of countless people, yet there is one extraordinary person who is my life aspiration. That person is my mother, Celina Sotomayor. — Sonia Sotomayor

Freedom, as I have been taught to understand as a political being in exile- to be protected by law, to be able to live my life as I choose, absent from tyranny and persecution- is perhaps not the foremost aspiration here in Dhompa's pastoral and nomadic world. The elders tell me they equate freedom with the right to live as Buddhists, which entails being able to perform their rituals, have access to lamas and to monasteries, and be able to participate in retreats and studies. They might even refer to an aspired state of mind: to be free of attachment, anger, stupidity, jealousy and arrogance. To be released from fear and, perhaps, even from their attachment to the past. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Nothing is over our heads if we hold them high enough. — Johnny Rich

My wife, Rohini, visits a lot of government schools as part of her NGO reach-out. One of the questions she most likes to ask the kids is what they would like to be when they grow up. The answers are varied--'engineer,' 'teacher,' 'policeman' and, increasingly, 'computer' [sic]. But even in the rural schools, one aspiration that they never express is 'farmer — Nandan Nilekani

For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company. — Henry David Thoreau

I see myself doing Harry Potter films as long as I'm enjoying it and as long as they are going to challenge me as an actor. I want to be an actor - it's my aspiration - so I want to do other films. I want to write something and I want to direct something! — Daniel Radcliffe

I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. — George Saunders

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. — Rabindranath Tagore

I think of my father growing up in South Jersey, the son of second-generation German immigrant glassblowers. The opportunities for him of feeling that aspiration, that yearning, get out of the small town, connect to a larger world, get yourself to New York, wanting to play the piano at every opportunity, bonding with people who were on a similar path, ending up in Provincetown, which was kind of nexus for nonconformity, and artistic dropout reality. — Anne Waldman

My grandmother was a chef, and she taught me to cook. One day I want a restaurant, a small Italian grill. That's my aspiration. — Jeremy Miller

After returning from his stint in the minors made reference to the movie Slapshot with: I'm happy to be back. It was never my aspiration as a kid to play in the Federal league. — Glenn Healy

I was overpowered by the mere sensation of that dream and it alone survived in my sorely wounded heart. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The mere word freedom is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misuse it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery-even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness-is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. — Andre Breton

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 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. Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I want to be one of those people, be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That's my aspiration. — Julian Casablancas

I dare not say with Paul that I am the slave of Christ, but my highest aspiration and desire is to be the slave of Christ. — George MacDonald

My aspiration to become a jurist had been laid to rest in the Graveyard of Failed Hopes, an all-female establishment. The sorrow of it had faded, but regret remained, and I'd taken to wondering if the Fates might be kinder to a different girl. — Sue Monk Kidd

I like my heroes to be imperfect; I like them to be striving. I identify with that kind of aspiration to do better. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

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

My aspiration was always to be a fashion editor. — Nina Garcia

My biggest aspiration is to inspire people to do good. I believe that our wish for a harmonious world begins and ends with doing good. To inspire and empower people to focus on goodness, I wrote a new book called 'Activate Your Goodness: Transforming the World through Doing Good.' — Shari Arison

If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you'd have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large. — Dean Koontz

It feels like home, far from home, yet homely. I have always been a fan of Delhi's practical life not that i have lived in an aspiration or yearning to make a living here, but delhi has always been on my soapbox. — Parul Wadhwa

My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself; but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak. — Henry David Thoreau

It's not my aspiration to appear on a reality show. That's the last thing I need in my life. — Carolina Herrera

My aspiration to spend time at sea as requisite literary training died long ago, as a teenager, on a white-knuckled ferry ride to Elba during a torrential rainstorm [Kushner, Rachel, Diary, London Review of Books, January 14, 2015]. — Rachel Kushner

But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie, if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me, if I have the opportunity to do it. — Christopher Nolan

I say to my colleagues never confine your best work, your hopes, your dreams, the aspiration of the American people to what will be signed by George W. Bush because that is too limiting a factor. — Nancy Pelosi

Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. — Hilaire Belloc

My definition of success is not based on achieving the impossible, but rather surviving the probable. And with a threshold that horribly low, simple survival cannot help but become my highest aspiration. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly. — Hazel Gaynor

I don't want any sports anymore, except fighting which is the only sport I really watch - whether it's boxing or UFC. I don't know why. I think maybe it's an aspiration I didn't get the chance to explore more, but I don't think my father expected anything from me, I think it's more what I put on myself. — Channing Tatum

My two older brothers are both molecular biologists and neuroscientists, and I feel like representing them accurately is never done in movies, and I really wanted to at least capture the spirit of a Ph.D. student whose goal and aspiration is to increase the sum total of human knowledge. That is noble. That was really, really important, to capture the three-dimensionality of scientists. Scientists fall in love, scientists have the greatest sense of humor, scientists are passionate. — Mike Cahill

My motivation and aspiration is the same, being number one or being number five. So that's the truth. And my goal is the same - it's to always be happy playing, it's to enjoy the game and improve always. — Rafael Nadal

That was my aspiration, so I was there in a seminary with just boys who were studying to be priests. Pretty rigorous schooling; we never got home, we stayed there all year. — Peter Jurasik

My primary ambition is to be a fiction writer ... Being a critic wasn't an aspiration of mine. — Walter Kirn

Could I make tongue say more than tongue could utter! Could I make brain grasp more than brain could think! Could I weave into immortal denseness some small brede of words, pluck out of sunken depths the roots of living, some hundred thousand magic words that were as great as all my hunger, and hurl the sum of all my living out upon three hundred pages - then death could take my life, for I had lived it ere he took it: I had slain hunger, beaten death! — Thomas Wolfe

It is my aspiration that health finally will be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for. — Kofi Annan

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

It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone. — Mark Twain

The paper is my savior, the pen my blood, to words that shed my world. — Anthony Liccione

I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration. — James A. Michener

I chase my dreams through nightmares. — Brian Spellman

When I started my own business, my main reason for designing clothes was that I wanted to dress rock stars and the people who went to rock concerts. It didn't go beyond that aspiration at that point. — Anna Sui

My poetic aspiration
Is to become,
A Jack of all styles
And a master of pun. — Clive Blake

My greatest aspiration was always to live in the tropics. — Manuel Puig

My highest aspiration in life is to serve as the Limerick Laureate of Nantucket. — Alan C. Baird

I live in the constant newness of aspiration. Whatever I think, I ignore. Whatever I feel, I don't trust. Yet I listen to my thoughts and follow my feelings. — Frederick Lenz

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

I reason everything out, and usually analyze my tastes too well to succumb to them blindly. And that's my chief defect, the real cause of my weakness. But this woman has taken possession of me in spite of myself, in spite of my fear and my knowledge of her; and she possesses me as if she had plucked out, one after the other, my every last aspiration. — Guy De Maupassant

All I can do now is carry on with my life. — Amanda Laneley

We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup. I learned to watch, to put my trust in other hands than mine. And I learned to wander. I learned what every dreaming child needs to know
that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it. — Beryl Markham

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, "Thou art my refuge. — George MacDonald

When will you desist playing tour guide?" he asked. "I should think never. It is the greatest aspiration of my life to give historic tours," Cinderella lied — K.M. Shea

What does not come into man's imagination is called a "gift" because whatever passes through his imagination is in proportion to his aspiration and his worth. However, God's gift is in proportion to God's worth....no matter how much eyes have seen, ears heard, or minds conceived the gift you expect of Me, My gift is above and beyond all that. — Jalaluddin Rumi

As soon as we hit campus freshman year, Kennedy had pledged his father's fraternity. Despite my boyfriend's need for cliquish affiliation, I'd never shared that aspiration. He didn't seem to mind when I said I preferred not to rush any sororities, as long as I supported his future-politician need for brotherhood. He told me once he sort of liked that I was a GDI girlfriend.

"A GDI? What's that?"

He'd laughed and said, "It means you're goddamned independent. — Tammara Webber

My view is the core engine supporting India's growth aspiration will be the financial sector, which will have to get more efficient. — Uday Kotak

I value and trust those w^ho love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. — Henry David Thoreau

Part of my aspiration as a film actor is to bring subtlety to everything I do - honesty but subtlety. — Benjamin Bratt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I took off from Providence, my only professional aspiration was what it had always been: I wanted to be a sportscaster. By the time I landed in the desert, I knew I would spend the rest of my life trying to be a writer. — Mike Greenberg

I know well, Monsieur, how much you have to endure in your present duty, and I ask Our Lord to strengthen you in your difficulties. It is in such circumstances that we acquire virtue; where there is no suffering, there is little merit. My wish is that God may grant us great indifference with regard to duties. O Monsieur, how sure we would then be of doing His Holy Will, which is our sole aspiration, and how much peace and contentment we would enjoy, or so it seems to me! — Vincent De Paul

My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit. — Mason Cooley

My aspiration is not to be loved. It is that my government be respected and credible. — Mario Monti

The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evils; for our childhood is born of His fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, "Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home". — George MacDonald

Squeezing it in my palm, I prayed, Please, God, let this seed you planted in me bear fruit. — Sue Monk Kidd

I've been writing all my life. Even though I didn't have sort of careerist aspirations as a writer, it was very much my identity. — Ayana Mathis

I am extremely privileged to serve Rhode Island in the United States Senate, and that is my only goal and aspiration. — Jack Reed

I've always treated my children as beings in their own right. I respect their feelings and aspirations entirely. — Grace Kelly

The film that changed my life is a 1951 film by Vittorio De Sica, 'Miracle in Milan.' It's a remarkable comment on slums, poverty and aspiration. — Beeban Kidron

College had once been my greatest aspiration; it stood for everything my mother did not - intellectualism, feminism, freedom. But being kidnapped had given me plenty of time to think, and somewhere between all that fear and dread, I'd realized that was the wrong reason to go to college. That the potential for those things had been inside of me all along, only I'd never realized because I hadn't believed myself strong enough to break free without an intermediary. — Nenia Campbell

For the most part I have been able to meet all my goals, but I always strive for bigger goals in life so everything's not complete just yet. My first aspiration was to be known as a singer and also as an advocate for sickle cell disease. I try to be that inspiration, you know. It's not as bad as people try to make it seem. I mean, it is, but it's not. People don't have to be afraid of it; they don't have to be held down by it. Try to find triumph in the situation. — A. J. Green

My highest aspirations as a songwriter are that people would sing my songs or know songs I've written sometime in as far into the future as I feel comfortable seeing. — Jeff Tweedy

I pledge myself to the Path of Love. I demand of my soul that I, the Spirit in form, shall act as a channel for compassion and an instrument for love until I know myself to be Love itself. I am that Love. With pure intent I serve. This love and zeal in me must feed the aspiration of my fellowmen. To this - in knowledge full - I pledge myself. — Anonymous

For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus. — Therese De Lisieux

I don't think I had the aspiration to be a star growing up. I loved Madonna and Bette Midler, and I had my karaoke machine and would sing their songs. — Mandy Moore

When I wrote Chuky script, I was a student at UCLA, an undergraduate and my biggest aspiration for it was that I would get my foot in a door somewhere, that I would get an agent or something and it was just beyond my wildest dreams that this big-time producer, David Kirschner. — David Kirschner

After much effort to live up to a glorious standard there came fatigue, wan hope, and boredom. I experienced extreme boredom. I saw others experiencing it too, many denying, by the way, that any such thing existed. And finally I decided that I would make boredom my subject matter. That I'd study it. That I'd become the world's leading authority on it. March, that was a red-letter day for humanity. What a field! What a domain! Titanic! Promethean! I trembled before it. I was inspired. I couldn't sleep. Ideas came in the night and I wrote them down, volumes of them. Strange that no one had gone after this systematically.
Oh, melancholy, yes, but not modern boredom. — Saul Bellow

My aspiration isn't to be some fashion photographer or anything. I think that's a space that's occupied by people that have a full-time commitment to the industry. You have to really be 100% invested to be successful in that industry. — C. J. Wilson