Skip to content

Ambition displeases when it has been sated... Having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.

— Pierre Corneille Cinna (1641)

L'ambition déplaît quand elle est assouvie... Monté sur le faîte, il aspire à descendre.

Original text (French)

Another quote →

Notes from Wikiquote

Auguste, act II, scene i.

Topics

Ambition

More quotes by Pierre Corneille

Brave men are brave from the very first.

Le Cid (1636)

As great as kings may be, they are what we are: they can err like other men.

Le Cid (1636)

Oh, how sweet it is to pity the fate of an enemy, when we have no longer anything to fear from him!

La Mort de Pompée (1643)

Who is all-powerful should fear everything.

Cinna (1641)

He who is insulted has a right to be outraged, as unpunished audacity only increases!

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