Skip to content

Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.

— John Cowper Powys The Meaning of Culture (1929)

Another quote →

Topics

Ambition

More quotes by John Cowper Powys

The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.

The Complex Vision (1920)

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.

The Pleasures of Literature (1938)

Most of the pathetic scenes in almost everybody's life are scenes unnoted by anyone and totally disregarded by the person in question.

All John Cowper Powys quotes →

You may also like

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)

Attribution

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