Ambition has no rest! [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

By that sin angels fell. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ambition plagues her proselytes. [ Proverb ]

Soldiers are martyrs to ambition. [ Proverb ]

Ambition is the mind's Immodesty. [ Davenant ]

Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ambition is not a vice of little people. [ Montaigne ]

Fatal ambition! say what wondrous charms
Delude mankind to toil for thee in arms? [ Rowe ]

Ambition has but one reward tor all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name! [ William Winter ]

The path of glory leads but to the grave. [ Gray ]

Love is not to be reason'd down or lost
In high ambition or a thirst of greatness. [ Addison ]

Men would be angels, angels would be gods. [ Pope ]

He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below. [ Byron ]

Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ambition, like a torrent, never looks back. [ Ben Jonson ]

Blood only serves to wash Ambition's hands. [ Byron ]

Fame, the sovereign deity of proud ambition. [ Sheridan ]

Uncurbed ambition, unresisting sloth,
And base dependence, are the fiends accurst. [ Mason ]

Think not ambition wise, because it is brave. [ Sir W. Davenant ]

Ambition is a lust that's never quenched,
Grows more inflamed, and madder by enjoyment. [ Otway ]

Ambition is but the evil shadow of aspiration. [ George Macdonald ]

Love the sense of right and wrong confounds;
Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds. [ John Dryden ]

Ambition and love are the wings to great deeds. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Too low they build who build beneath the stars. [ Young ]

No man is born without ambitious worldly desires. [ Carlyle ]

How is night's sable mantle labored over.
How richly wrought with attributes divine!
What wisdom shines! what love! this midnight pomp.
This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds inlaid!
Built with divine ambition. [ Young ]

They that stand high, have many blasts to shake them;
And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. [ William Shakespeare ]

Proud-crested fiend, the world's worst foe, ambition. [ Bloomfield ]

If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest. [ Syrus ]

It is a mean ambition to be the squire of the company. [ Proverb ]

All may have, if they dare try, a glorious life or grave. [ Herbert ]

To take from a soldier ambition, is to take off his spurs. [ Proverb ]

Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. [ Denham ]

Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels. [ William Shakespeare ]

Ambition is the germ from which all growth in nobleness proceeds. [ T. D. English ]

Ambition hath but two steps; the lowest, blood; the highest, envy. [ Lilly ]

In these times gain is not only a matter of greed, but of ambition. [ Joubert ]

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid.
Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate. [ Horace Greeley ]

You have greatly ventured, but all must do so who would greatly win. [ Byron ]

Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship. [ Joseph Roux ]

A republic is not founded on virtue, but on the ambition of its citizens. [ Voltaire ]

Of all kinds of ambition, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. [ Goldsmith ]

Take away ambition and vanity, and where will be your heroes and patriots? [ Seneca ]

The highest and most lofty trees have the most reason to dread the thunder. [ Rollin ]

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues. [ Quintilian ]

Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude. [ Sir Walter Scott ]

Ambition persevers in the desire of acquiring power, genius flags of itself. [ Madame De Stael ]

Ambition thinks no face so beautiful as that which looks from under a crown. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

When once ambition has passed its natural limits, its progress is boundless. [ Seneca ]

Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: playthings of grown children. [ Victor Hugo ]

Take from men ambition and vanity and you will have neither heroes nor patriots. [ Seneca ]

A sigh, a look, a word from your lips, that is the ambition of a heart like mine. [ Racine ]

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly. [ Horace ]

That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty. [ Seneca ]

The path of genius is not less obstructed with disappointment than that of ambition. [ Voltaire ]

What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power? [ Higgons ]

We frequently pass from love to ambition, but one seldom returns from ambition to love. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Remarkable places are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there. [ Madame Necker ]

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Ambition hath one heel nail'd in hell, Though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens. [ Lilly ]

Violent zeal for truth has a hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride. [ Swift ]

The tallest trees are most in the power of the winds, and ambitious men of the blasts of fortune. [ William Penn ]

There is not a love, however violent it may be, to which ambition and interest do not add something. [ La Bruyere ]

What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interests. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Friendship is too pure a pleasure for a mind cankered with ambition or the lust of power and grandeur. [ Junius ]

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy. [ Balzac ]

What is ambition? It is a glorious cheat! Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly the sapphire walls of heaven. [ Willis ]

Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme, - to be sublimely great, or to be nothing. [ Southern ]

Hence (from the ambition of Caesar) arise devouring usury, grasping interest, shaken credit, and war of advantage to many. [ Lucan ]

The ambitious deceive themselves when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means. [ Rochefoucauld ]

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment. [ Landor ]

In Nature things move violently to their places, and calmly in their place; so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. [ Bacon ]

Talents angel-bright, if wanting worth, are shining instruments in false ambition's hand, to finish faults illustrious, and give infamy renown. [ Young ]

Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers; knowing that gold and silver were originally mingled with dirt, until avarice or ambition parted them. [ Seneca ]

The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward. [ Horace Mann ]

The objects of avarice and ambition differ only in their greatness. A miser is as furious about a halfpenny as the man of ambition about the conquest of a kingdom. [ Adam Smith ]

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. He who is endowed with it may perform very good or very bad actions; all depends upon the principles which direct him. [ Napoleon ]

In ambition, as in love, the successful can afford to be indulgent towards their rivals. The prize our own, it is graceful to recognize the merit that vainly aspired to it. [ Bovee ]

Urge them while their souls are capable of this ambition, lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath of soft petitions, pity and remorse, cool and congeal again to what it was. [ William Shakespeare ]

When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. [ William Shakespeare ]

Every age has its different inclinations, but man is always the same. At ten, he is led by sweetmeats, at twenty by a mistress, at thirty by pleasure, at forty by ambition, at fifty by avarice. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

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 toward Himself. [ J. G. Holland ]

Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

The awakening of our best sympathies, the cultivation of our best and purest tastes, strengthening the desire to be useful and good, and directing youthful ambition to unselfish ends, - such are the objects of true education. [ J. T. Headley ]

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced. [ Bishop Hall ]

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. lie that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth lulls his age with the milder business of saving it. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is defeated. Such a boy will be fired by ambition; he will be stung by reproach, and aminated by preference; never shall I apprehend any bad consequences from idleness in such a boy. [ Quintilian ]

The failure of his mind in old age is often less the result of natural decay than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment brings indolence: indolence, decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy. [ Sir Benjamin Brodie ]

It is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption, although they may be very convenient for gratifying the ambition or the vanity of individuals, have any great effect upon the fortunes or the power of parties. And it is a great mistake to suppose that bribery and corruption are means by which power can either be obtained or retained. [ Beaconsfield ]

The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale. [ Colton ]

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. [ Goldsmith ]