Ambition Quotes
Shakespeare leads, followed by Milton, Pope, Cowper and the American educator William H. Crogman. The sourced lines are mostly unflattering. Wilde, in 1894, calls ambition the last refuge of the failure, and Bierce, in 1911, defines it as an overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. Burke, in Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796), puts it more neatly: ambition can creep as well as soar.
Flagged: a passage on moderation being a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, credited to Disraeli, is marked misattributed, and two passages of Dryden, one on ambition and gold, the other on the diadem as the centre of ambition, are disputed.
Love's but a frailty of the mind,
When 'tis not with ambition joined.
The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own.
He never wanted to be regarded as a hero or leader, and he never had political ambitions.
Dances With Wolves has the kind of vision and ambition that is rare in movies today.
It is astonishing what you can do when you have a lot of energy, ambition and plenty of ignorance.
All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Your imagination is notoriously poor. Not everyone holds identical ambitions to your own!
Where ambition of place goes before fitness
Of birth, contempt and disgrace follow.