"Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise."

"Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms. Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind."

"Such joy ambition finds."

"If at great things thou would'st arrive, Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me; Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand, They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain, While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want."

"But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? who aspires must down as low As high he soar'd, obnoxious first or last To basest things."

"Here may we reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

"The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, May hope to achieve it before life be done; But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of barren regrets."

"He was utterly without ambition [Chas. II.]. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration."

"Ambition has no rest!"

"The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice A banner with the strange device, Excelsior!"

"I see, but cannot reach, the height That lies forever in the light."

"Vestigia nulla retrorsum."

"Nil mortalibus arduum est: Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitia."

"Sublimi feriam sidera vertice."

"For all may have, If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave."

"They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem."

"But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land."

"Il gran rifiuto."

"On the summit see, The seals of office glitter in his eyes; He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels, Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends, And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down, And wins them, but to lose them in his turn."

"By low ambition and the thirst of praise."

"On what strange stuff Ambition feeds!"

"Prima enim sequentem, honestum est in secundis, tertiisque consistere."

"Nor strive to wind ourselves too high For sinful man beneath the sky."

"Yesterday’s dreams became today’s steps."

"Too low they build who build beneath the stars."

"Who can hope for nothing should despair of nothing."

"Ambition is the death of thought."

"The people ... have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre of the Prince."

"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."

"I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference."

"Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind."

"“Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul,” she thought; “as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.”"

"The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation."

"When we are beginning to live, then we are dying. There is, therefore, nothing more profitless than ambition."

"Full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition."

"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?"

"Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love."

"Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping."

"But when a miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, or when an ambitious man thinks of nothing but glory, they are not reckoned to be mad, because they are generally harmful, and are thought worthy of being hated. But, in reality, Avarice, Ambition, Lust, &c., are species of madness, though they may not be reckoned among diseases."

"Ambition is an idol on whose wings Great minds are carry'd only to extreme; To be sublimely great, or to be nothing."

"The poor man’s son ... devotes himself for ever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness. To obtain the conveniencies which these afford, he submits in the first year, nay in the first month of his application, to more fatigue of body, and more uneasiness of mind, than he could have suffered through the whole of his life from the want of them. ... He makes his court to all mankind; he serves those whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises. Through the whole of his life he pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power."

"Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition."

"I charge thee, fling away ambition; By that sin fell the angels."

"The highest form of vanity is love of fame."

"At nos non imperium neque divitias petimus, quarum rerum causa bella atque certamina omnia inter mortales sunt, sed libertatem, quam nemo bonus nisi cum anima simul amittit."