'Tis immortality to die aspiring,
As if a man were taken quick to heaven. [ Geo. Chapman ]

Aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself. [ Goldsmith ]

In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels men rebel;
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against the Eternal cause. [ Pope ]

The aspiring youth that fired the Ephesian dome outlives in fame the pious fool that raised it. [ Colley Gibber ]

Not in the knowledge of things without, but in the perfection of the soul within, lies the empire of man aspiring to be more than man. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

Mutability is the badge of infirmity; it is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike; now he is for marrying, and now a mistress is preferred to a wife; now he is ambitious and aspiring, presently the meanest servant is not more humble than he; this hour he squanders his money away, the next he turns miser; sometimes he is frugal and serious, at other times profuse, airy, and gay. [ Charron ]