Famous Quotes & Sayings

William Feather

The tragedy is that so many have ambition and so few have ability

William Styron

For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

William Laud

Behold, I am become a reproach to thy holy name, by serving any ambition and the sins of others; which though I did by the persuasion of other men, yet my own conscience did cheek and upbraid me in it.

William Lilly

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

William Lilly

Ambition hath but two steps: the lowest, blood; the highest, envy.

Walter Savage Landor

Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: The rock and the herbage are of one substance to her.

Walter Scott

Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasure, and you can create for the world a destiny more sublime that ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.

Walter Scott

Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours---ambition is the serious business of life.

Walter Scott

Well, then--our course is chosen--spread the sail-- Heave oft the lead, and mark the soundings well-- Look to the helm, good master--many a shoal Marks this stern coast, and rocks, where sits the Siren Who, like ambition, lures men to their ruin.

Walter Scott

Ambition is no cure for love!

Vladimir Putin

Somebody is always suspecting Russia of having some ambitions, there are always those who are trying to misinterpret us or keep something back.

Vladimir Putin

We are not going to waste our reserves and burn them for any political ambitions. We will act very carefully.

Winston Churchill

I play for high stakes and given an audience - there is no act too daring or too noble.

Winston Churchill

... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.

Winston Churchill

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

Winston Churchill

You must put your head into the lion's mouth if the performance is to be a success.

Winston Churchill

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair.

William Safire

To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

William Law

All the wants which disturb human life, which make us uneasy to ourselves, quarrelsome with others, and unthankful to God, which weary us in vain labors and foolish anxieties, which carry us from project to project, from place to place in a poor pursuit of we don't know what, are the wants which neither God, nor nature, nor reason hath subjected us to, but are solely infused into us by pride, envy, ambition, and covetousness.

Woodrow Wilson

That is Gladstone, the greatest statesman that ever lived. I intend to be a statesman, too.

William Shenstone

It seems idle to rail at ambition merely because it is a boundless passion; or rather is not this circumstance an argument in its favor? If one would be employed or amused through life, should we not make choice of a passion that will keep one long in play?

William Merritt Chase

Combine a certain amount of indifference with your ambition. Be carefully careless. If you don't succeed today, there is always tomorrow.

William James

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition

William Gilmore Simms

There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.

William Gilmore Simms

Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes.

William Friedkin

We all wind up the same way, no matter what our goals or ambitions are. We have nothing at all to say about how we got into this world or how are going to leave it.

Whitfield Diffie

If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything.

Sarah Rees Brennan

If you’re calling her a floozy, I’m by way of being a bit of a floozy myself.” “Oh, Jared,” said Kami, who was well aware of his romantic experience, or total lack thereof. “You are not.” “Well, I have floozy ambitions.

William Faulkner

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless.

Warren G. Harding

Ambition is a commendable attribute, without which no man succeeds. Only inconsiderate ambition imperils.

Winston Churchill

It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word.

Wilson Mizner

A slave has but one master. An ambition man, has as many as there are people who helped him get his fortune.

W. C. Fields

There is not a man in America who has not had a secret ambition to boot an infant.