Skip to content

You think me ambitious: ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of conscientious scruples.

— Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Another quote →

Topics

Ambition

More quotes by Horace Walpole

Prognostics do not always prove prophecies, — at least the wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel– a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

Power is an intoxicating draught; the more a man has, the more he desires.

A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch.

Letter to Sir Horace Mann (1774)

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