Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top. - Robert Burton
OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock. - Ambrose Bierce
PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. - Ambrose Bierce
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. - William Shakespeare
I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means someone's passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn't mind leading. - Amy Poehler
I am ambitious. I set goals; not because I am ungrateful for what I have, but because I am happy with who I am. I enjoy the experience of rising above my perceived limitations and discovering new levels of my capabilities. - Steve Maraboli
A soul`s ugliness can be much more ambitious than her beauty. - Michalopoulos Angelos
The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as can help in making his fortune. - Jean De La Bruyere
Unless you are ambitious, you do not make progress. - Tony Blair
To wish a healthy man to die is the wish from a mind of sickness. To wish an ailing man to die is the wish of the ambitious. - Roman Payne
Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try." -- Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude. - Rex Stout
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise. - Maya Angelou
An ambitious amateur will rise above a complacent master. - Matshona Dhliwayo
Big houses are not build by big or powerful men but rather by ambitious and determined men. Their achievements make them big/powerful men - Amen Muffler
Think about it: Here you are, two ambitious, opinionated, stressed-out adults, trying to live in the same house together, prosper together, maybe raise kids together, and, with any luck, take pleasure in spending the rest of your natural-born lives together. This is not easy. - Paula Szuchman ; Jenny Anderson
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it. - Arnold Joseph Toynbee
God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project. - Anonymous
NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life. - Ambrose Bierce
We may make contact with ambitious species on other planets or stars; soon thereafter there will be interplanetary war. Then, and only then, will we of this earth be one. - will and Ariel Durant
Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement, not for the evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be. - William Clark
Ask a woman if she’s ambitious and she’ll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she’s competitive and she’ll look at you as if you suggested that she’s a hooker. - Gina Barreca
Go for your goal, be ambitious. Do what you dream, unlock your wishes. - Aaron David
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. - Charles Baudelaire
The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as can help him in making his fortune. - Jean de la Bruyere
...an ambitious array of dishonorable intentions that he intended to wield upon the Countess’s nether regions. — BATS 2015 - Fred Barnett
I'm tough, ambitious and I know exactly what I want. - Madonna
It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency. The point is no that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself.
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. - Gustave Flaubert
I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay. - Madonna
As more women lean in to their careers, more men need to lean in to their families. We need to encourage men to be more ambitious in their homes. - Sheryl Sandberg
those, who are believed to be most self—abased and humble, are generally in reality the most ambitious and envious - Baruch Spinoza
Happiness never made anyone rich or famous. That must be why ambitious people avoid it. - Marty Rubin
Even the most ambitious among us know to work from the shadows. We’re not interested in another war between Light and Dark. Not until the power balance has shifted, anyway. That’s where you come in. –Aedus Butler - Zechariah Barrett
Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid. - John Green