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Since you go where all have gone before, why do you torment your disgraceful life with such mean ambitions, O miser?

Abiturus illuc priores abierunt,
Quid mente cæca torques spiritum?
Tibi dico, avare.

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Ambition

More quotes by Phaedrus

You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.

Endure this evil lest a worse come upon you.

By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

He carried and nourished in his breast a snake, tender-hearted against his own interest.

O that such beauty should be so devoid of understanding!

Fables, I, 7, 2. Reported in Hoyt's (1922)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

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To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

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The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune, and favor cannot satisfy him.

Jean de La Bruyère Les Caractères (1688)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Phaedrus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.