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Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends — all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father who would call us homeward towards Himself — all these are the ground and justification for a Christian discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing but the infernal.

— Josiah Gilbert Holland Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

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Ambition

More quotes by Josiah Gilbert Holland

God be thanked that there are some in the world to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling.

Life is before you,— not earthly life alone, but life— a thread running interminably through the warp of eternity.

Power in its measure and degree is the measure of manhood.

The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.

The fact is that sin is the most unmanly thing in God's world. You never were made for sin and selfishness. You were made for love and obedience.

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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.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

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

Confucius

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: Josiah Gilbert Holland (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.