"Ambition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I— the ruler, in alliance with him, of my race in Saint Domingo—were brothers in soul, as we were apparently in duty and in fortune. Brothers in soul we were not, as it has been the heaviest grief of my life to learn. I spurn brotherhood of soul with one whose ambition has been for himself. Brothers in duty we were; and, if we should yet be brothers in fortune—if he should fall into the hands of a strong foe— But you are saying in your heart, 'No ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... professor that there were no such things in the University, he proceeded to London, where, after beating up in several booksellers' shops, theatres, exhibition-rooms, and other resorts of literature and taste, he formed as extensive an acquaintance with philosophers and dilettanti as his utmost ambition could desire: and it now became his chief wish to have them all together in Headlong Hall, arguing, over his old Port and Burgundy, the various knotty points which had puzzled his pericranium. He had, therefore, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... upon this, his very first hunt alone, he was filled with a newborn ambition. But before he had wandered for ten minutes he began to feel the heat, and wished he had not been so silly as to imagine he were cut out for a ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... from the stimulus of imagination. What among us makes for the immensity of emotion, is the great weight of accumulated emotional tradition stored up in literature and art, almost entirely wanting in the camps of the aboriginals. There the two greatest themes of modern drama, love and ambition, are modified, the one by the more or less communal nature of tribal labor, the other by the plain fact that in the simple, open-air life of the Indian the physical stress of sex is actually much less than in conditions ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... was bold enough to speak. "If you are indeed Ulysses, great are your wrongs, for your property has been, squandered, and riot and debauchery have filled your palace. But at your feet now lies Antinous, whose wild ambition meant to slay your son and divide your kingdom. Since he is dead, spare the rest of your people. Our gold and treasures shall defray the expense, and the waste of years shall be refunded to you within the day. Until ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... happy, fortunate?' and the like, and I suppose that that is the consideration which presses with special force upon a great many of you. Now I want you to think of another question: 'How shall I cleanse my way?' For purity is the best thing; and to be good is a wiser as well as a nobler object of ambition than any other. So my object is just to try and urge upon my dear young friends before me the serious consideration for a while of this grave question of my text, and the answers which are given ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the Persians, the most important business was frequently discussed. [53] The dexterous fugitive promoted his interest by the same conduct which gratified his revenge. He incessantly urged the ambition of his new master to embrace the favorable opportunity when the bravest of the Palatine troops were employed with the emperor in a distant war on the Danube. He pressed Sapor to invade the exhausted and defenceless provinces of the East, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... for the sectaries of Omar extended itself to all sorts of infidels. Jews, Christians, fire-worshippers, and worshippers of images, all came within the scope of his execration; and what at first he had practised from motives of ambition, at length became the ruling principle of his nature. His family, and I among the number, were brought up in his tenets, and imbibed all his violent prejudices; and so much did we hang together by them that we formed as it were a distinct ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... of that aspect of selfishness which often mars in the approbation of a country a really honest statesmanship—an egotistic tenacity of one's own creature as the best, which yet is not the criminal selfishness of ambition. Still that egotism is not seldom disastrous to the people's interests. While these statesmen nursed their own bantlings and held them up to national notice, they were apt to avoid or too lightly regard the views of men as able as themselves. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Ellis Island in New York harbour, where the immigrants emerge from the steerage to face the ordeal of the Immigration Officer. He would show how the same causes, hunger, fear, persecution, restlessness, ambition, love of liberty, which set the great westward procession in motion in the early days of tribal migration, are still alive and at work to-day among the populations of Eastern Europe. He would look into their minds and read the story of the generations ...
— Progress and History • Various
... about myself ... my ambition ... my struggles ... my morbidity ... my lack of experience with girls ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ghastly head; on the right the decapitated trunk. By the victim stand the bloody actors in the tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen! When I review the awful guilt of Marat and Robespierre, humbly do I give thanks that I have been kept from yielding, like them, to fierce ambition and lust of power, and that I can lay my head upon a peaceful pillow at my ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... than ambition prompted him to write, and he wrote as long as he lived. A partial list of his works begins with a pseudonymous 'Life of Frederick the Great' (1834-36), and 'Das Judenthum und der Neuste Literatur' (The Jew Element in Recent Literature: 1836), ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... subject in his letters, and it had been more and more evident that Mrs. Stanhope meant to educate the two children, as she would have done her own, in various branches, without any view to a special training for a life-work. Emma feared that Fani would lose his ambition to be an artist, and she set herself to work to counteract this danger. She had heard of a book called the "Lives of Celebrated Painters," and she did not rest till her aunt promised to procure it for her at Christmas; for she thought it would inspire Fani with fresh enthusiasm to learn how artists ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... in concerts, do you suppose?" asked Betty, with reverence for such overpowering ambition ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... proposal to leave the matter of the choice of a Caesar in the hands of a woman was not to his liking. Though good-looking and still in the prime of life he had never found favour with women, and Dea Flavia had often shown open contempt for him, and for the selfish ambition which moved his every action, and which he was at no pains ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... be misleading. He did the rough work of policing the city, and was consequently a mark for all the men of spirit who disliked being kept in order. Giovio, in his Life of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, quite gravely relates how it was the highest ambition of young Romans of spirit to murder the Bargello. He mentions, in particular, a certain Pietro Margano, who had acquired great fame and popularity by killing the Bargello of his day, one Cencio, in the Campo di Fiore. This man became an outlaw, and was favourably received by Cardinal ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Heavenly Father forgiving sin, and filial service from a pure heart, as the effect of love—it presents nothing to love, for its Deity is dead; nothing as the ultimate object of action but self; and nothing for man's highest and holiest ambition but annihilation." ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... us, dear friends? We find ourselves not in the port we were seeking; not in the goal of our ambition, the haven of our hopes; but on the shores of the decaying past. 'Ever drifting' ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... was a fine and dramatic bit of impromptu pleading. The weary committee, which had been tortured all day with dull, statistical arguments made by the mechanical device fiends, and dreary platitudes unloaded by men whose chief ambition was to shine as copyright champions, suddenly realized that they were being rewarded for the long waiting. They began to brighten and freshen, and uplift and smile, like flowers that have been wilted ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... apprised the Chang family that the major had actually suppressed his indignation, hushed his complaints, and taken back the presents of the previous engagement. But who would have ever anticipated that a father and mother, whose hearts were set upon position and their ambition upon wealth, could have brought up a daughter so conscious of propriety and so full of feeling as to seize the first opportunity, after she had heard that she had been withdrawn from her former intended, and been promised to the Li family, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... had peeped through the cracks of the fence that formed their enclosure, and had seen the performers ride around the ring, standing upon the backs of the horses. He was immediately inspired with the ambition to imitate this feat, and the next time that he mounted his father's horse, he made the attempt to perform it. His father, when he found it out, was very angry with him, and sternly forbade him ever to do such a thing again. He declared positively that if he did, he would whip him ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... My great ambition as a boy was to be a sailor; the idea of becoming one occupied my thoughts by day and influenced my dreams by night. I delighted in reading naval histories and exploits and tales of the sea, and I looked upon Rodney, Howe, Nelson, and Saint Vincent, as well as Duncan, Collingwood, Exmouth, ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... achievement as to become President of the United States. Indeed, I would much rather be your story-teller, under these conditions, than to be the President. So you have helped me to fulfill my life's ambition, and I am more grateful to you, my dears, than I can express ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... in rank with every particle of his hair cut off, as if shaved, and his head as bare as a door knob. "What style is that, Ben?" the boys asked. "The 'horse thief' cut," he gravely announced. Their one ambition now, was to acquire the ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... but his invitation exerted a disturbing influence upon Barbara. She would have been more than glad to accept, for the entertainments of the Bishop of Arras were unequalled in varied attractions, magnificence, and gaiety, and what a satisfaction to her ambition it would be to sing before such an audience, dine at the same table with such ladies and gentlemen! She knew also how heavily this man's favour would weigh in the scales with the Emperor, yet to appear ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Disappointed in his ambition, Drayton shortly retired from the Bar and lived the life of a country gentleman, while his former friend rapidly rose to be the head of ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... the comment on the last passage, "to expect a Recognition of sober worth in the Day of Love and Ambition. And Mistress Twining, after the manner of her kind, pays but little Heed to lasting Affection before the Time comes when it shall be of ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... and Gabblewig, which the manager took to himself, was one of those personation parts requiring five or six changes of face, voice, and gait in the course of it, from which, as we have seen, he derived all the early theatrical ambition that the elder Mathews had awakened in him. "You have no idea," he continued, "of the immensity of the work as the time advances, for the Duke even throws the whole of the audience on us, or he would get (he says) into all manner of scrapes." The Duke of Devonshire had offered ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... death of Judas the secular character which the conflict had assumed ever since 162 continually became more conspicuous. Jonathan Apphus fought for his house, and in doing so used thoroughly worldly means. The high-priesthood, i.e., the ethnarchy, was the goal of his ambition. So long as Alcimus lived, it was far from his reach. Confined to the rocky fastnesses beside the Dead Sea, he had nothing for it but, surrounded by his faithful followers, to wait for better times. But on the death of Alcimus (159) the Syrians refrained from appointing ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Locke, 'have been overturned by the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men; by the people's wantonness and desire to cast off the lawful authority of their rulers, as well as by the rulers' insolence, and endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over the people.' The recent danger to our constitution was in my ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... way from the expected camp the oxen snuffed the moisture, and began to hurry towards it with increased speed. A little while before it did not seem as if they had ambition enough left to make a quick move, but as we approached the water those which had no packs fairly trotted in their haste to get a drink. This stream was a very small one, seeping out from a great pile of rocks, and maintaining itself till it reached the sands, where it disappeared completely. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... ambition to rule alone, he entirely forgot all that was right, and, turning traitor, secretly offered to help the Persians if they would promise to make ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... with sadness that Judge Wright remembered the weak lad he had left on Colonel Boone's hands, a victim of a father's lack of training, and found here, instead, the same lad, but with much of the weakness erased, a man now, with an ambition to do ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... which, bearing the name of 'Mussa Braziliensis Hartii Verrill.' Now, I like that. There's a noble aspiration for fame as well as euphony. Only it's a little heavy on the poor mollusk to make him draw these aspiring young gentlemen up the steep heights of ambition. But if they can afford to risk two names on a tiny bit of jelly as big as the head of a pin, say, I think we should be justified in putting all four of ours on to this big beast over here. And, since the captain thinks ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... birthright, man's undying passion. Germany! fated to execration by future generations for that she ahs crucified the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Germany! for the balking of whose insolent and futile ambition, and for the crushing of whose archaic military madness we Canadians are tramping on this Dominion Day these English fields and these sweet English lanes 5,000 miles from our Western Canada which dear land we can not ever see again if this monstrous threatening ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... better git a silk hat to wear. I suppose I shall have to drive some of the Carrolls' folks," said Rawdy, with a timid look at his wife. A silk hat had always been his ambition, but she had always ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... village of Bath, in the County of Addington, on the Bay of Quinte. He soon obtained employment as a school teacher, and encountered no difficulty in gaining a livelihood, though the humble role he was compelled to play comported ill with his past experience and present ambition. There is little doubt that he was an admirer of republican institutions, and that he so remained to the end of his life, though his admiration was thrown away in this country, and it was impossible for him to return to his own. He was a useful man in the little community where he resided, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... contemporaries, as for example the psalmists, he found little joy or inspiration in his religion. According to the conclusion, which he proclaimed in the beginning of his essay and held consistently throughout, all human striving and ambition, even life itself, are but superlative vanity, nor can man attain any permanent or complete satisfaction. The one positive teaching which Koheleth reiterates is that it is man's highest privilege to extract from passing experiences the small measure of joy and happiness ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... which were now of note. He was among, not the two or three perhaps, but the twenty or thirty, who were at the head of his profession. If he had not gone further it was perhaps more from lack of ambition than from want of power. He had been for years in Parliament, but preferred his independence to the chance of office. It is impossible to tell how John's character and wishes might have been modified had he married and had children round him like other men. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... omissions. I likewise use the terms already received, and already understood, though perhaps others more proper might sometimes be invented. Sylburgius, and other innovators, whose new terms have sunk their learning into neglect, have left sufficient warning against the trifling ambition of teaching arts in a ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... 175. THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on any thing but the consent of the people; yet such have been the disorders ambition has filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken notice of: and therefore many have mistaken the force of arms for the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... the great Kuru clan." I stood petrified like a statue, and forgot to do him obeisance. Was this indeed Arjuna, the one great idol of my dreams! Yes, I had long ago heard how he had vowed a twelve-years' celibacy. Many a day my young ambition had spurred me on to break my lance with him, to challenge him in disguise to single combat, and prove my skill in arms against him. Ah, foolish heart, whither fled thy presumption? Could I but exchange my youth with all its aspirations for the clod of earth under ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... by an arbitrary denial of the right of suffrage, and consequent ineligibility to office. Thus a large and powerful class of incitements to mental effort, which have been operating continually upon the whites, have never once stirred the sensibilities nor waked the ambition of the colored community. Parents, however wealthy, had no inducement to educate their sons for the learned professions, since no force of talent nor extent of acquirement could hope to break down ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... indited than her own, and felt herself abashed. She had hitherto paid but a superficial attention to literature. She had read, to gratify the ardour of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge; but she had not thought of writing as an art. Her ambition to excel was now awakened, and she applied herself with passion and earnestness. Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as related to accuracy and method, her lessons ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... in Amherst, Mass., and he expected to live with him and work his way through Amherst College. "Red" declared that he had enough of school and that after he got his high school diploma, he would get a position in a bank. It was his ambition to become a banker and he felt sure of getting the opportunity through ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... never end was his grand ambition, and he took elaborate precautions against becoming a matter-of-fact husband. Every morning he ordered himself to gaze at her with rapture, as if he had wakened to the glorious thought that she was ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... theoretically and practically; but he was not above recognizing their social importance in a country of no society, and of even being fascinated by Carroll's quiet and secure self-possession and self-contentment in a community of restless ambition and aggressive assertion. He came forward to welcome him cordially; he introduced him with an air of satisfaction; he would have preferred if he had been in uniform, but he contented himself with the fact that Carroll, like all men ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... his expedition. If the Governor ordered them to disband, they would defy him. "They drank damnation to their souls", if they should prove untrue to him. Touched by these proofs of confidence, and fired perhaps with ambition, the young man yielded, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Leaf-Cutter's establishment! She soon finds out her mistake; she meets the door-keeping Halictus, who administers a sharp correction. She makes off at full speed. And so with the others which, through inadvertence or ambition, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... abbe, sadly, "it is not in this world that one receives the recompense of so many virtues; he has a more exalted ambition." ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... recluse was King Sebastian, who, by mortifying his own flesh, was atoning for the calamity he had brought upon his kingdom. At first he repudiated all claim to such distinction; but after a time his ambition seems to have been aroused; he ceased to protest against the homage of the ignorant, and consented to be treated as a king. Having made up his mind to the imposture, Alvares resolved to carry it out boldly. He appointed officers of his household, and despatched ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... never to be nearer and dearer to each other than old friends?" he asked in a whisper. "I am not a hero—your goodness overrates me, dear Miss Charlotte. My one ambition is to be the happy man who is worthy enough to win you. At your own time! I wouldn't distress you, I wouldn't confuse you, I wouldn't for the whole world take advantage of the compliment which your sympathy ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:—"The King to Col. Ov[erton]. Has received such information of his affection that he does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the captain, on dress parade, this office has come to me entirely unsought. It has not been my wish to wear the gilded trappings of office and command men, but rather to fight in the ranks, a private soldier. I enlisted as a private, and my ambition has been to remain in the ranks to the end of the war. But circumstances over which I have no control has taken me and placed me on the high pinnacle of Corporal, and I must bow to the decree of fate. Of course, in my new position ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... describe her ambition, but her fancy had already cast a glow over the calling which George was to adopt. There was in the family an innate tendency toward the more exquisite things of life, and this would colour his career. She hoped he would become a merchant prince after the pattern of those Florentines ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... safely be left to yearnings for immortality, or ambition, or love, or something equally lofty and grand, there are thousands which society must get done somehow, and which it gets done pleasantly and comfortably only because, by a charmingly convenient illusion, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... life," says Hugh Black, "we shall not be asked how much pleasure we had in it, but how much service we gave in it; not how full it was of success, but how full it was of sacrifice; not how happy we were, but how helpful we were; not how ambition was gratified, but how love was served. Life is judged by love; and love ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which appear necessary to heroism. In mockery the quality of ambition was bestowed upon him but not the requisites for success. Nature has been working for millions of years to produce just such characters as Caius Simpson, and, character being rather too costly a production to throw away, no doubt she has a precise use ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... with interest but without enthusiasm to this suggestion. Probably he remembered that an essential part of OMAR's scheme was that if the Four failed to agree they were to be promptly hanged, and had himself no ambition to take part in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... day after the murder of Jesus, about mid-day. There they were all, His judges and murderers: the aged Annas with his sons, exact and disgusting likenesses of their father, and his son-in-law Caiaphas, devoured by ambition, and all the other members of the Sanhedrin, whose names have been snatched from the memory of mankind—rich and distinguished Sadducees, proud in their power and ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... talents and integrity, to the head of one of the largest publishing-houses of the country. But it was not merely by strength and tenacity of purpose, and by clearness of judgment, that Mr. Phillips was distinguished. He had also a generous ambition, and aims which transcended the sphere of self and the limits of merely commercial success. Showing, as he did, a rare courage (and that of the best kind, for it was a courage based upon experience and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... shadow. Thoughtful and solitary he had always been, but now he appeared indifferent to everything which had formerly given him pleasure,—even to those literary studies by means of which he might have hoped to win distinction. To his mother—who thought that marriage might quicken his former ambition, and revive his interest in life—he said that he had made a vow to marry no living woman. ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... possession of the old house. But Mr. Wilson said, "No; if a parcel of boys found their way in, all the tramps in the neighborhood would learn how to get in too." Still, it continued the object of the boys' ambition to get into the house, and they were fond of going up to play in the broad grassy space by the side of the house; and they kept good oversight ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... my cross have taken, All to leave and follow thee; Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, Thou, from hence, my all shalt be! Perish, every fond ambition, All I've sought, or hoped, or known, Yet how rich is my condition, God and heaven are still ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... planted in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... in hand, turned away. He would not cut down an unarmed man, and some strain of chivalry hidden beneath the Spaniard's ambition and cruelty recognized the boy's nobility. He stepped aside and rebuked Braxton Wyatt for striking Long Jim. Then he took off his doublet and one of the men bound up his wound, which was painful but not at all dangerous. His heart was full of rage ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of countryside pastor which represents the genius of priesthood; but he is equally far above the base type in which a strongminded and unscrupulous peasant uses the Church to extort money, power, and privilege. He is a priest neither by vocation nor ambition, but because the life suits him. He has boundless authority over his flock, and taxes them stiffly enough to be a rich man. The old Protestant ascendency is now too broken to gall him. On the whole, an easygoing, amiable, even modest man as long as his dues are paid and his ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... Tim Fisher's own ambition and character would insist that Mrs. Bagley, with Martha, leave James Holden to take up residence in a home furnished by Tim Fisher upon the date and at time she ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... place on the Hawkesbury, intending, poor man! to spend the evening of his life indulging his hobby of chemistry, while I took the care of the place off his hands—for though I have two sisters, I was his only son. His great ambition was to bequeath some chemical discovery to future generations. But I demolished his castles in the air along with my own. It's no odds about myself; but my poor father deserved better, after all his work and worry. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... to seek among the ancient institutions for illustrations (rarely apposite) of the modern, is, indeed, to desert the character of a judge for that of an advocate, and to undertake the task of the historian with the ambition of the pamphleteer. Though designing this work not for colleges and cloisters, but for the general and miscellaneous public, it is nevertheless impossible to pass over in silence some matters which, if apparently trifling in themselves, have acquired dignity, and even interest, from brilliant speculations ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Verendrye's enemies pretended that he thought of nothing but beaver-skins, and slighted the discovery which he had bound himself to undertake; but his conduct proves that he was true to his engagements, and that ambition to gain honorable distinction in the service of the King had a large place among the motives that ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... while Mrs. Alderling leaned back against the slim column again. He said gravely: "It was a great thing for Marion, though. In view of the railroad accident that didn't happen, she convinced herself that her sole ambition was that we should die together. Then, whether we found ourselves alive or not, we should be company for each other. She's got it arranged with the thunderstorms, so that one bolt will do for us both, and she never ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... Revenge, Suspicion, Deceit, Slyness, Guilt, Vanity, Conceit, Ambition, Pride, Humility, &c.—It is doubtful whether the greater number of the above complex states of mind are revealed by any fixed expression, sufficiently distinct to be described or delineated. When Shakspeare ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... crisis, then, when the Convention could no longer temporize with the expectations it raised—when the government was divided between one party who had deposed the King to gratify their own ambition, and another who had lent their assistance in order to facilitate the pretensions of an usurper—and when the hopes of the country were anxiously fixed on him, died Louis the Seventeenth. At an age which, in common life, is perhaps the only ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the seven golden lamps in the holy place; at others almost melted away in the rush of the radiance unspeakable from the hidden and holier side—the region whence come the revelations. To draw through it, if but once, the feeblest glimmer of the light I had but once beheld, seemed an ambition worthy of a life. Knowing her power of reticence, however, and of withdrawing from the outer courts into the penetralia of her sanctuary, guessing also at something of the aspect in which she regarded me, I dared not ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... (1556) which appeared in 1707. But the work with which his name is permanently associated is his Martial Atchievements of the Scots Nation, issued in two large folios, vol. i. 1711, vol. ii. 1716. In the title-page and preface to vol. i. he disclaims the ambition of being an historian, but in vol. ii., in title-page and preface alike, he is no longer a simple biographer, but an historian. Even though, read in the light of later researches, much of the first volume must necessarily be relegated to the region of the mythical, none the less was the historian ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... affections, either of joy or of trembling? Christians, you come not to hear God speak, and so you meet with empty ordinances—God is not in them. How often do crooked and sinister ends creep in, and bias the spirit! Men ask, to spend on their lusts, and to satisfy their own ambition. Some would have more grace to be more eminent, or to have a more pleasant life; and this is but the seeking to spend on your lusts. If affection run in the channel of a duty, it is often muddy, and runneth through our ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... his chin, "an I am neither hanged nor murdered you shall one day find me a worshipful magistrate, Martin, Justice o' the Peace and quorum—custos rotulorum and the rest on't, there my ambition lies. As for you, Martin, Lord Wendover, there is your enemy, ha?—bloody vengeance and murder ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... up and met Harley's thin smile, the smile that on Wall Street was a synonym for rapacity and heartlessness, in the memory of which men had committed murder and suicide. On the instant there jumped between him and his ambition the face that had worked magic on him. What a God's pity that such a lamb should be cast to this ravenous wolf! He felt again her arms creeping round his neck, the divine trust of her lovely eyes. He had saved her when this man who called ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... not a river nor a landscape that gives to a town its real importance; it is the character of its men and women. That is the pinnacle from which to view its landscape. Before cities and factories had begun to stir the ambition and attract the young by opportunities for fortune and fame, Bellingham was the home of an intelligent, liberty-loving people; a community self-sufficing, sharing its abundance with those less abounding. It was thus the best place in the world to be ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... strive to scale ambition's height, Who with the worm may sleep ere fall of night? Or can I joy in happiness to-day Who know not what may chance by ...
— Hebrew Literature
... and bestowed on him all acceptable favours. In this class he came to find other qualities than those referred to in the Sartor inscription, and other aims than that of "preserving their game,"—the ambition to hold the helm of the State in stormy weather, and to play their part among the captains of industry. In the Reminiscences the aristocracy are deliberately voted to be "for continual grace of bearing and of acting, steadfast honour, light address, and cheery stoicism, actually yet ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... against it. Cut out "Imperialism"; substitute another word, with just as many syllables and no less an imposing sound, "Proletariat"; call the thing "Class Warfare"; advertise it thoroughly and attract to it all the political egoists of disappointed ambition in the various countries of the enemy, and the German War Lords would find it no longer necessary to crush all existing nations, since all existing nations would then set about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... the horror of its tumults and movements. If either necessity or gain has made them give a glance at their rivers, they are satisfied with that, and do not seek a better fortune with its dangers. This inertia forbids them, incapable of giving force to their ambition, from following its ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... entertaining and original character—a spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, whose whole life was a grand social success. She was also one of the most popular and voluminous writers of her day; but, with all her sparkle and dash, ambition and industry, destined in a few generations more to be almost unknown, vanishing down that doleful "back entry" where Time sends so many bright men and women. As the founder of Irish fiction—for the national tales of Ireland begin with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... and a first-class ladies' ready-to-wear shop-real perfection, in fact! You don't want to just look at what these small towns are, you want to look at what they're aiming to become, and they all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make 'em the finest spots on earth—they all want to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... present year my brother wrote the first chapter of "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac." At that time he was in an exhausted physical condition and apparently unfit for any protracted literary labor. But the prospect of gratifying a long-cherished ambition, the delight of beginning the story he had planned so hopefully, seemed to give him new strength, and he threw himself into the work with an enthusiasm that was, alas, misleading to those who had noted fearfully ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... human? That is the 462:24 important question. This branch of study is indispen- sable to the excision of error. The anatomy of Christian Science teaches when and how to probe the self-in- 462:27 flicted wounds of selfishness, malice, envy, and hate. It teaches the control of mad ambition. It unfolds the hallowed influences of unselfishness, philanthropy, spir- 462:30 itual love. It urges the government of the body both in health and in sickness. The Christian Scientist, through understanding ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... was already well known in the modish world of town for his beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau and conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished a private ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered waistcoats himself in time, and be as renowned abroad and as much the town talk as certain other celebrated beaux had been before him. The art of ogling tenderly and ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... soon after such phrases as "Our first bow to the public"... "Our solemn and bounden duty to the district which it is our highest ambition to serve..." etc. Phrases which had already occurred in the leading article dictated on the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... he is fighting. It is not for the ambition of a sovereign or the impatience of his heir, for the arrogance of a caste of country squires or the profit of a firm of merchants. No; he fights for the land where he was born and where his dead sleep; he fights to free his invaded country and give her back her lost ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... themselves entitled to use every unfashionable variety of the human species. A slight inclination of a bow, and a very cold "You have the advantage of me, sir," dropped as it were unconsciously from his tongue, were meant to repress the old gentleman's advances, and moderate his ambition to be hail fellow well met with his betters. But Mr. Touchwood was callous to the intended rebuke; he had lived too much at large upon the world, and was far too confident of his own merits, to take a repulse easily, or to permit his modesty to interfere ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the Church. Yet soon after I experienced a change for the better and finally I reached this Holy College on February 6th of this present year. I remained, however, for a long time exhausted, weak and without any ambition or appetite. ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... no ambition for herself—she seemed to have transferred her whole personality to her child—but she was passionately resolved that Undine should have what she wanted, and she sometimes fancied that Mrs. Heeny, who ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... by the bottom heat of slavery, the ruling class in all the disloyal States arrogated to themselves a superiority not compatible with republican equality, nor with just morals. They claimed a right of pre-eminence. An evil prophet arose who trained these wild and luxuriant shoots of ambition to the shapely form of a political philosophy. By its reagents they precipitated drudgery to the bottom of society, and left at the top what they thought to be a clarified fluid. In their political economy, labor was to be owned by capital; in their theory of government, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... He had absolutely no material ambitions for Himself and all His impulses and inclinations were for the life of an occult ascetic. But the idea of a redeemed and regenerated Israel was one calculated to fire the blood of any Jew, even though the element of personal ambition ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... minor princes of Europe spirited away, and perhaps either murdered or thrown into some prison or fortress, where he will drag out his days and nights in solitude until he goes mad: a young, bright, promising life ruined, just because he happens to stand in the way of some unscrupulous ambition, or vile ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play circus ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... "Would that satisfy your ambition? I have got a place for you;—but it is here." As he spoke, he laid his hand upon his heart. "Not as a companion to a lady are you required to fulfil your duties here on earth. It is a fuller task of work that you must do. I trust,—I trust that it may not be more ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... temporal authority.] Later, instead of advisers they claimed to be absolute judges in ecclesiastical matters, and when the temporal possessions of the Popedom made the chair of St. Peter an object of ambition to covetous, designing men, the character of Bishop was too often merged in that of Prince, and spiritual power ceased to satisfy those who thought it their duty or their interest to enforce what was in ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... being too engrossing, she determined that no other power should do so. She therefore took advantage of disturbances which arose there, in consequence, the French writers affirm, of the perfidious ambition of Albion, and chased both parties out of the island. The French soon recovered possession of it, which they solely held in future; but many exiles never returned, preferring to woo Fortune in company with the French and English adventurers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Sarah Burns, as you have long since guessed. He is one of the few men of talent who has no ambition to quit his happy home to adventure in a large city. He is celebrated far and near, but nothing can draw him away from the spot where a youth he came to watch over a young girl whose life was trembling in ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the lover, the bright promise of a glorious future. Then the scene changes, and your heart is bleeding with unutterable anguish at the mute grief that follows the irreparable loss of his love, which carries in its train lost ambition, talent, manhood. Just let us quote one passage: "There is a suffering so painful that no hand is tender enough to touch it, and so deep that no heart is brave enough to fathom it. Dumbly we sink the head, as before something sacred. Never could ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... charm, the power of which he could not resist for a moment,—flattery. He thus describes, with a complacency but thinly concealed under the veil of affected modesty, the part she played, in order to give the impression—which it was the great object of his ambition to make upon the public mind—that the Devil stood in special ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... give the world never to have said an unkind word to him," observed one, whose arm, suspended from a sling, attested he had not come scatheless out of the action. It was St. Clair, whose great ambition it had always been to have his name borne among the list of wounded—provided there were no broken bones in ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... over Pontus, was an extraordinary man. He spoke many languages, was the idol, of his subjects, and had boundless ambition. He doubted the durability of the Roman Empire, and began to enlarge his own territory, with no apparent fear of ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... sought after by the bravest and best; and all ages and peoples have imagined or produced heroes as inevitably as they have made ploughs for turning the soil or ships for getting through the water or weapons with which to fight their enemies. To be some kind of a hero has been the ambition of spirited boys from the beginning of history; and if you want to know what the men and women of a country care for most, you must study their heroes. To the boy the hero stands for the highest success: to the grown man and woman he stands ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... her. Well, each man to his taste. I'd never interfere with any man's pleasure. I loathe women myself, always have. They never appealed to me a little bit. In Paris the men used to wonder what I was after. I was after Ambition in those days. Funny thing, but I thought I was going to be a great painter once. Queer what one can trick oneself into believing—so I might have been if I hadn't come to this beastly town. Hope I'm ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... asked her to grant him the assistance necessary for his journey and the sojourn at Kingsmill; the small sum he had been able to save, after purchase of books, would not suffice. Mrs. Peak knew not whether to approve her son's ambition or to try to repress it. She would welcome an improval in his prospects, but, granting success, how was he to live whilst profiting by a scholarship? And again, what did he propose to make of himself when he had ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the ambition of Napoleon Bonaparte produced without intention on his part, was the uprising against Spanish oppression in South America. When Napoleon compelled Ferdinand to abdicate the crown of Spain in favor of Joseph Bonaparte, the loyalty and spirit of the Spaniards were aroused, and the people refused ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... hypothesis of the being of one. Zeal for my master led me to write the book in the days of my youth, but some one stole the copy; and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the pugnacity of a young one. This you do not seem to see, Socrates; though in other respects, as I was saying, your notion is a very ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... to these schemes. For a long time he had wished for repose. Often he had feared that his wife's ambition would lead them too far. But now, since she stopped of her own accord, it was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mathilde had finished by reducing him to the frightened obedience of a little boy. The once dissolute she-ghoul had become a dictatorial spouse, eager for respect, and consumed with ambition and love of money. She showed, too, every form of sourish virtue. It was said that they had been seen taking the Holy Communion together at Notre Dame de Lorette. They kissed one another before other people, and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... crossed the desert, I had spoken to him of that old wisdom which the priests of the inner temple keep and hand down from one to the other; I blew to flame the mystic fire which already smouldered within him, and filled with the vast ambition of God, he left his tribe and entered the priesthood as neophyte in the Temple ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... patron and protector until his death in 1809. "The great master of Greek drama," says a writer in the "Quarterly Review," "could have desired no better elements than are to be found in the history of this remarkable man; his remorseless ambition and his natural affections—his contempt for the fables and ceremonies of his country when in prosperity—his patient submission to them when in distress—his strong intellects—his evil deeds—and the death which was believed to be inflicted on him ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... Francia Bigio fell off in his later style, partly because his ambition failed him, and also because he began to look on art as a means of livelihood—a motive which is certain death to ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... such a superiority that his majesty could not bear it; and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that court.—In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes. Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the fencing-master assassinated; for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... friends and without protectors, whether living men or spirits, and therefore exposed to every ill-treatment and utter contempt. This explains the all-important position of the "Suque" in the life of the natives, being the expression both of religion and of ambition. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... compelled to labour, like a beast of burden, for no personal benefit to himself, but only for the good of the community—a world where there are to be no men, but only numbers—where there is to be no ambition and no hope and no fear,—but the Socialism of free men, working side by side in the common workshop, each one for the wage to which his skill and energy entitle him; the Socialism of responsible, thinking ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... Gregg told her of his early ambition to be a mining engineer, his year at a mid-western school of mines, where his studies were terminated, he admitted with entire frankness, by a request to leave. He told her also of his return home to San Francisco, and the subsequent years of aimless drifting which ended ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... was open to him. Why not then seek in the latter, the happiness which he had vainly dreamed of finding in the former? Why not choose one among the many paths to distinction which untried life held out so temptingly, and take his chance of success as others had done before him? Lured onwards by ambition, he resolved to settle in Paris, naturally supposing that the Queen's well-known veneration for his saintly Mother, would secure him her favour. The Duchess d'Aiguillon at once offered him her patronage, and the difficulties of ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... Tasso's heroine into a tree, in which she could only groan and bleed. Hence power is necessarily an object of our desire and of our admiration. But of all power, that of the mind is, on every account, the grand desideratum of human ambition. We shall be as Gods in knowledge, was and must have been the first temptation: and the coexistence of great intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... myself beyond the limits of the city; and seating myself by the roadside I gazed in silent abstraction over the moonlit landscape; and as I sat thus I fell into a deep reverie. Memory carried me back to my youthful days when everything was bright with joyous hope and youthful ambition. I recalled the time when I wooed you from your pleasant country home, and led you to the altar a fair young bride, and there pledged myself before God and man to love, honour and cherish you, till death should us part. Suddenly, as if uttered by ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Jealousy, and the whole brood which that single word suggests. Keeping money which God would have out in service for himself. Self-seeking. Self-assertion. A frivolous spirit, instead of a joyous winsomeness, or a sweet seriousness. Overworking one's bodily strength, which grows out of a wrong ambition, and is trusting one's own efforts more than God's power, and which always involves disobedience of His law for the body. Over-anxiety which robs the mind of its freshness, and the spirit of its sweetness, and whose roots ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... mean by destiny, that if a man strives all that is in him to attain a laudable object or ambition, and allows of no permanent rebuffs, but comes back at it, again and again—the result is absolutely certain and he need have no worry as to the ultimate success, because it is up to him to use and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... first usurpers encouraged the ambition of fresh aspirants, and barely ten years elapsed till the first regular invasion of the island took place, under the illustrious Elala, who, with an army from Mysore (then called Chola or Soli), subdued the entire of Ceylon, north of the Mahawelli-ganga, and compelled the chiefs of the rest of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... His ambition was that of all modest sailors—to buy a plot of land and become an agriculturist in his old age. The Basque pilots used to dream of prairies and apple orchards, a little cottage on a peak and many cows. He pictured to himself a vineyard on the coast, a little white dwelling ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the negro's determination. Here was a fellow man who was one of the feeblest of the under dogs in the great social fight; and with money enough in hand to give him at least a breathing interval, his highest ambition was a ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... while I may have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while I am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am not at all avaricious. Education has further limited my scope. Having been brought up in society, I am impregnated with its laws; not only should I be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painful to try to do so. In ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... returned to Bundelkund in the year 1849. He married a noble Indian lady, who was imbued with an ambition not less ardent than that by which he was inspired. Two children were born to them, whom they tenderly loved. But domestic happiness did not prevent him from seeking to carry out the object at which he aimed. He waited an opportunity. At length, as he ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... think it will be as pleasant to live here all your days, and find no higher ambition than the hope that your ponies may be ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... this day a considerable number of bears is to be found within the limits of the settlements. Scarcely a State in which some wild woodlands or mountain fastnesses do not afford shelter to a number of bears, and to kill one of them is a grand object of the hunter's ambition. Along the whole range of the Alleghanies black bears are yet found, and it will be long ere they are finally extirpated from such haunts. In the Western States they are still more common, where they inhabit the gloomy ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... subjects, since they furnish men to the Brazilian authorities when requested; but none of them, even those of the most advanced tribes, appear to make use of this authority for the accumulation of property— the service being exacted chiefly in time of war. Had the ambition of the chiefs of some of these industrious tribes been turned to the acquisition of wealth, probably we should have seen indigenous civilised nations in the heart of South America similar to those found on the Andes ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... replied La Tour, "and my hatred to you will mingle with the last throb of my existence. Like an evil demon, you have followed me through life; you blighted the hopes of my youth,—the interests and ambition of my manhood have been thwarted by your machinations, and I have now no reason to look for mercy at your hands; still I defy your malice, and I bid you ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... to those who followed. But in his manner there was remarked a quietness of determination, a sullen disregard of danger, that seemed to denote some deeper rooted purpose than the mere desire of personal distinction. His ambition appeared to consist, not in being the first to reach or scale the fort, but in placing himself wherever the balls of the enemy flew thickest. There was no enthusiasm in his mien, no excitement in ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... same typical inconsequence, the same freedom from the pedantry of logic. Eliza Doolittle's ambition is to become fitted for the functions of a young lady in a florist's shop. Henry Higgins, professor of phonetics, undertakes for a wager to teach her the manners and diction of a duchess—a smaller achievement, of course, in Mr. SHAW'S eyes, but still a step in the right ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various |
