"Aspire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had a number of relations for whom provision must also be made. To the more prominent courtiers above enumerated was added Jacques d'Albon de Saint-Andre, son of Henry's tutor, who, from accidental intimacy with the king in childhood, was led to aspire to high dignities in the state, and was not long in obtaining a marshal's baton.[552] Herself securing not only the rank of Duchess of Valentinois, with the authority of a queen,[553] but the enormous revenues derived from the customary confirmation ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... to comprehend the genius and the full import of institutions so opposite to those of our own free republic, where every man, however humble his condition, may aspire to the highest honors of the state,—may select his own career, and carve out his fortune in his own way; where the light of knowledge, instead of being concentrated on a chosen few, is shed abroad like the light of day, and suffered to fall equally ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... undecided; since they both still use the language, the same customs and the same laws. For, as of old they lived alike poor and alike free, equal proved the evils and advantages on each side the river, and common to both people. The Treverians and Nervians aspire passionately to the reputation of being descended from the Germans; since by the glory of this original, they would escape all imputation of resembling the Gauls in person and effeminacy. Such as ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... could manage—with a girl." She brought out the subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of "a girl" was an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it best, however, to be bold, and stammered on, "We could get one for about ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... appease his thirst by drinking, only excites it the more. I have suppressed many details to which I may later return if I learn that they afford pleasure to Your Holiness, charged with the weight of religious questions and sitting at the summit of the honours to which men may aspire. It is in no sense for my personal pleasure that I have collected these facts, for only the desire to please Your Beatitude has induced me ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... exhorted me to set about writing a History of Ireland, and archly remarked, there had been some good Irish writers, and that one Irishman might at least aspire to be equal to another. He had great compassion for the miseries and distresses of the Irish nation, particularly the Papists; and severely reprobated the barbarous debilitating policy of the British government, which, he said, was the most detestable ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... they then divide and disunite The ribs and limbs, observant of the rite: On these, in double cauls involved with art, The choicest morsels lay from every part. The sacred sage before his altar stands, Turns the burnt offering with his holy hands, And pours the wine, and bids the flames aspire; The youth with instruments surround the fire. The thighs now sacrificed, and entrails dress'd, The assistants part, transfix, and broil the rest While these officious tend the rites divine, The last fair branch of the Nestorean line, Sweet Polycaste, took the pleasing toil To bathe the prince, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... dinner gown, and carrying her regal head as if the earth belonged to her, he really saw no reason why he, with his qualifications of comparative youth, good looks (his sort of good looks), and notorious pulpit eloquence, should not aspire to rush in where so many feared to tread. His rush had been checked at the outset, but he was still unaware of the nature of the barrier that Deb held rigid between them. He continued to gaze at her with his ardent little black eyes as if no barrier were there. And it was because he did ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... that station of honor, which he now believes will satisfy him, and his ambition would aspire to one more exalted. Let him govern one kingdom, and he would desire to subjugate another till the whole world bowed to his nod. And were every star an inhabited world, and did he possess means to invade them, his ambition would continue to soar till he ruled the universe, and were there no ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... aspire to Shakespearian production, he used the great bard's works as models for appraising other plays. "Shakespeare invented farce comedy," he once said, "and whenever I consider the purchase of such a thing ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... constitution, in an individual who aspired to a post so eminent and responsible. Satisfied with the stars and mitres and official seals, which were periodically apportioned to them, the Marney family did not aspire to the somewhat graceless office of being their distributor. What they aimed at was promotion in their order; and promotion to the highest class. They observed that more than one of the other great "civil ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Arabia and East Africa, but it is carried to the fore like a toucan's crest. Some, by way of coquetterie, trace upon the scalp a complicated network, showing the finest and narrowest lines of black wool and pale skin: so the old traveller tells us "the heads of those who aspire to glory in apparel resemble a parterre, you see alleys and figures traced on them with a great deal of ingenuity." The bosom, elaborately bound downwards, is covered with a square bit of stuff, or a calico pagne—most ungraceful of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In earlier days a man who began with pick and shovel might have come to own a mine. That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense majority, and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty thousand mine workers could ever aspire to enter the small circle of men who held in their grasp the great anthracite industry. The majority of the men who earned wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were compelled to progress not by ceasing to be wage-earners, but by improving ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery: last the bright consummate flower Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit, Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd, To vital spirits aspire: to animal: To intellectual!—give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding; whence the soul REASON receives, and reason is her ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... regulating the trade of the colonies. Yet they cannot conceive, and humbly insist it is not essential to support a proper relation between the mother country and colonies transplanted from her, that she should have a right to raise money from them without their consent, and presume they do not aspire to more than the natural rights of British subjects when they assert that no power on earth has a right to impose taxes on the people, or take the smallest portion of their property, without their consent given by their representatives in ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Paradise heard that a man had dared to aspire to be as the Gods. Time after time he had fought the Titans, who were his peers, and kept them out of his kingdom; yet he feared a man whose power ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... very young girl who was his cousin, but was as poor as himself. Still it was a providential thing for him that she was poor, otherwise he never should have dared to aspire to her. It was a sad occurrence that had first thrown Lescande with his cousin—the loss of her father, who was chief of one of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... termination. It is also the name of the sixth month of the Maya calendar. Axul would therefore be thy end. Among all the nations which have recognized the existence of a SUPREME BEING, Deity has been considered as the beginning and end of all things, to which all aspire to ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... climates of the globe have felt the vicissitudes of light and darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes and diminish our apprehensions; we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... least idea that piece of luck would fall in my way. Meta managed that for me most delightfully. You know, girls, how earnestly the poor dear Elliot-Smiths aspire, and how vain are their efforts, to get into what we are pleased to call the 'good set' here. It isn't their fault, poor things, for, though they really have no talent nor the smallest literary desires, they would give their eyes ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... through all the early years of struggle: a struggle which has begun again—a struggle the details of which were not even told her, and which she has no curiosity to hear. She is content to work on to the end, believing that it was God's will for her to do so. The lay sisters can aspire to none of the convent offices; they have none of the smaller distractions of receiving guests, and instructing converts and so forth, and not to have as much time for prayer as they desire is their penance. They are humble folk, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... established belief on a thousand sides. The young Henry was welcomed by Erasmus as likely to be the glory of the age that was opening. He was young, brilliant, cultivated, and ambitious. To what might he not aspire under the new conditions! Henry VIII. was all that, but he was cautious and looked about him. Europe was full of wars in which he was likely to be entangled. His father had left the treasury well furnished. The young King, like a wise man, turned his first ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... husband. Why was I unhappy? Why is any woman unhappy? Because her love is trampled on, degraded—the spiritual part of it unsatisfied. Women are made for love and without love life means nothing to them. Women are naturally finer than men, they aspire more strongly to what is beautiful and spiritual, but their souls can be coarsened, their love can be killed. They can be driven—they have been driven for centuries (through fear of men) into lies and deceits and sensuality ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... commonwealth, therefore, a citizen may by many means and in many ways aspire to the princedom without risking destruction, both because republics are slower than princes are to take alarm, are less suspicious and consequently less cautious, and because they look with greater reverence upon their great citizens, who are in this way rendered ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... I could only convince Elsie of his true character she would detest him as thoroughly as I do. If he had his deserts, he would be in the State's Prison; and to think of his daring to approach my child, and even aspire to her hand!" ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... give my dear people at home some idea of the beauties we have out here," exclaimed D'Arcy, who happened to look in the day Sophy had finished her sketch. "I should be so thankful if you could make a copy for me; still more so if I might aspire to possess ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... concur in thinking that want of money do do the most of it, but that that is not all, but the having of gentlemen Captains, who discourage all Tarpaulins, and have given out that they would in a little time bring it to that pass that a Tarpaulin should not dare to aspire to more than to be a Boatswain or a gunner. That this makes the Sea Captains to lose their own good affections to the service, and to instil it into the seamen also, and that the seamen do see it themselves and resent it; and tells us ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... is on a different principle from that of Irving and Cayley. He does not aspire to present Spain as it affected him,—but Spain as it is. His travelling party consisted of two ladies and two gentlemen—an arrangement fatal to romance. To go out on a serenading adventure in wicked Madrid is ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... I did not see him. He is regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.—there seems, indeed, to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and marvel at the success which attends our method of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... scribe— "Who are the chiefs of the marauding tribe?" Lo! high Parnassus, lifting from the plain, Upon his hoary peak, a noble fane! Within that temple all the names are scrolled Of village bards upon a slab of gold; To that bad eminence, my friend, aspire, And copy thou the Roll of Fame, entire. Yet not to total shame those names devote, But add in mercy this explaining note: "These cheat because the law makes theft a crime, And they obey all ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... by stripling hand, it cut into the marrow. Clan Colla,[122] let them have their due, thy true and gallant following, Strength, kindness, grace, and clannishness, their lofty spirit hallowing. Hot is their ire as flames aspire, the whirling March winds fanning them, Yet search their hearts, no blemish'd parts are found all eyes though scanning them. They rush elate to stern debate, the battle call has never Found tardy cheer or craven fear, or grudge the prey to sever. Ah, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of which, Dr. Mayo, has turned out some very distinguished pupils, of whom I was not fated to be one; for, after a year or so of futile attempt on my part to learn something, and give promise that I might aspire to the woolsack or the premiership, I was pronounced hopeless; and having declared myself anxious to emulate the deeds of Nelson, and other celebrated sailors, it was decided that I should enter the navy, and steps were taken to send me at ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... will be found in these volumes derive their chief value from the fact that they are recorded by a bystander and spectator, who was not, and did not aspire to be, an actor in the occurrences he witnessed, but who lived on terms of intimacy with many of the most active politicians of his times, in both the leading parties in the State, although he strictly belonged to ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... productive power, they are made, as one may say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file of engineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains of artillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their services the third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... Good looks, good birth, good-humor, and good assurance will do much; but the want of one or more of these will not invalidate the election, nor the union of all four insure it. It must be very pleasant to serve in the compagnie d'elite. They have privileges to which the Line may not aspire. It does not much matter what they do. Their victories make them no enemies, and their defeats raise them up hosts of sympathizers and apologists. When they err gravely, if you hint at the misdemeanor, a "true believer" ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... which woman has been accustomed to be treated, and which have made her either the slave, the toy, or the ridicule of man; and it is getting to see that she is at least of as much relative importance as man; that without her he will in vain aspire to rise; that, by a law as infallible as that which moves and regulates the spheres, his condition is determined by hers; that wherever she has been a slave, he has been a tyrant, and that all oppression and injustice ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... negligent scribes, the share of each one might be put in the scale of his iniquities. Should he have survived the invention of printing, surely this most properly meticulous fiend must to-day be assuming the heavy task of collecting the misprints scattered throughout the books which aspire to exactitude; it would be very foolish of him to trouble about others. As occasion requires he will place those misprints to the account of reader or author. I am infinitely indebted to my publishers and friends MM. Calmann, Levy and to ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... any measure determine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is not ours, but God's, and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension is finite; we ourselves infinite. We can only trust in God and do the truth; then, and then only, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... than all the rest; and thou art not the last man, who has seemed a hopeless and helpless wreck, unable to exercise the faith that seemed so natural to others; but who, after a time, under the teaching of Jesus, has been enabled to assume a position to which none of his associates could aspire! ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... always for the advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by any luck, it should succeed. For the rest, he did very well in the field; no one questioned that: for he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and put it into a good Vial full of Spring water, so as the upper part of the Mint was above the neck of the Glass, and the lower part Immers'd in the Water; within a few Dayes this Mint began to shoot forth Roots into the Water, and to display its Leaves, and aspire upwards; and in a short time it had numerous Roots and Leaves, and these very strong and fragrant of the Odour of the Mint: but the Heat of my Chamber, as I suppose, kill'd the Plant when it was grown to have a pretty thick Stalk, which with ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... that nothing is so high and lofty to which Bucolicks may not successfully aspire. But if this be so, what will become of Macrobius, Georgius Valla, Julius Scaliger, Vossius, and the whole company of Grammarians? who all affirm that simplicity and meanness is so essential to Pastorals, that it ought to be confin'd ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... sublime privilege of prolonging life in our hearts for a time by the life of the work we leave behind us would be (if we could only be sure of gaining it at last) a reward indeed for all the labor undertaken by those who aspire to ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... 11 [Aspire my soul, to glorious deeds, The "Captain of salvation" leads; March on, nor fear to win the day, Tho' death and hell ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... should say more, accept my sincere wishes for your happiness; and believe me when I say that the lot which you have chosen is, in my estimation, the highest to which man can aspire, and may your labors be blessed with ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... close of the sixteenth century or at the beginning of the seventeenth century, from Flanders, was one of the most distinguished of the town. It had even counted among its illustrious members a Seville Veinticuatro, and no one who was unable to present proof of noble lineage could aspire to that distinction.[1] ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... this fool game and pay the same amount of attention to your political fortunes,' I said to him, 'you would have a right to aspire to the Presidency of the United States.' And what do you suppose ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... multitude; for He is mightier than they and does not forsake them, who trust in him and serve him. And we must warn the people also not to plunge themselves into ruin by sedition. Tumults are generally excited by those who aspire after honors and riches. Now, that it may not seem as if Christians care more for the human than the divine, they should obey even tyrants in things, that only oppress the body, and pay taxes to them, so that the Gospel may not be reviled on their account. ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony of one of the greatest Princes in Germany; but must aspire to a Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance would carry him through any enterprise, or bring him off with honour, in both which he failed; being cast out of his own Country with shame, and he and his, ever after, living upon the devotion of other ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... and more wide, the kindling bosom swells, As love inspires, and truth its wonders tells, The soul enraptured tunes the sacred lyre, And bids a worm of earth to heaven aspire, 'Mid solar systems numberless, to soar, The death of ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... then, how she is situated," replied Victorine. "From infancy has Caliste been taught to aspire to the rose, every year has she ardently expected it; now this time her name is on the list, and her own sister, younger by three years, steps forward and takes it from her. Our parents, too, rejoice with the child that rejoices; ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... arms, O Lady of my heart, I die, to greater fame I'll not aspire, Content upon thy bosom to expire Whilst kissing thee and thus ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... eyes have track'd the conquering foe, And in calm torpor watch'd each new o'erthrow! Yon troop of peasants, ignorantly gay, Who waste in careless sports the passing day, Soon shall behold the waving sheets of fire, Sent from their peaceful domes, to heaven aspire. Each year, each month, new towns with ruin smoke, And province after province feels the yoke. Already on our conquer'd castle's height The Danish watchfires redden all the night, Soon, soon, their inroads will our fate decide— Haste, let us spread th' eventful tidings wide, Arm every ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... than with me—I have often said to myself that it is unworthy of a man to allow himself to be subjected by love, unworthy to make a woman the mistress of his thoughts, of his desires; that a man should strive for higher aims, aspire ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... (A.D. 1200). The last of these is the real fashioner of Chinese philosophy, and one of the truly great men of the human race. His works are chiefly Commentaries on the Kings and the Four Books. They are committed to memory by millions of Chinese who aspire to pass the public-service examinations. The Chinese philosophy, thus established by Choo-tsze, is ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... "Now we all know what Nick is, and few fellows like to play in a game where he has any part; but remember that he is one of the high-school students, and on that account has just as much right to aspire to a place on the representative team as ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... said that every French soldier carried the baton of a marshal in his knapsack, so now may the silver star be hidden in the pocket of the lieutenants of every staff department as well as those of the Fighting Force. There are none who may not aspire. ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... Wampum-hair, so called from the gentleness of his disposition and love of peace. He was only a few years the senior of the maiden, and of an obscure family compared with that of the famous Aishkwagon-ai-bee. But love levels all distinctions, and, impelled by an influence he could not withstand, he dared to aspire to the hand of Leelinau. Besides, there was one superiority he enjoyed which made the claim less presumptuous. Young as he was no hunter of the tribe could be compared with him in skill or daring. Other lodges might be destitute, but there was ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... general belief in your own guilt, and the certainty of your fate; such charges would be regarded as a paltry subterfuge, and no one would credit them. Go, fellow—the bat cannot consort with the eagle, nor can such as you aspire to even the most distant familiarity with persons of my rank. Depart, instantly; and to-morrow you shall receive a pecuniary reward that will amply compensate you for the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... as broad as humanity. As all the stars lie in the firmament, so all creatures rest in the heaven of His love. Mankind has many common characteristics. We all suffer, we all sin, we all hunger, we all aspire, hope, and die; and, blessed be God! we all occupy precisely the same relation to the divine love which lies in Jesus Christ. There are no step-children in God's great family, and none of them receives a more grudging ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... become natural to him since his illness began; "my love for you proved too strong to be restrained just now: but believe me, I had fully made up my mind never to open my lips to you on the subject; for what right have I, a helpless, and, I fear, hopeless, invalid, to dare to aspire—" ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... country is undone. I desire to be reckoned of the last age, and to be thought to have lived to be superannuated, preserving my senses only for myself and for the few I value. I cannot aspire to be traduced like Algernon Sydney, and content myself with sacrificing to him amongst my lares. Unalterable in my principles, careless about most things below essentials, indulging myself in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... young men who aspire to high positions, and are anxious to rise above their fellows, be sure of this, that those who have the apportioning of important and lucrative places of trust, judge in the main by Christ's rule, "He that is faithful in that which is least ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... and speaking with reference to the effect his acts and sayings may have had upon his claims for political preferment. If he should ever change his mind, however, no one has a better right than he has to aspire to anything within the gift ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titian woods, With forms that no man can discover For the dews that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters—lone and dead,— Their still waters—still and chilly With the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... out and looked on the landscape, he thought that never before had he seen it so dreamy—never before had he seen it so beautiful and so glorious, for never before had he so felt the use of this world as a place in which to attain to the good and to shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... compromise," he returned. "We've differed widely on this question of a greater canal. You have evolved a plan best suited to Utopia; my own is aimed to meet the human nature I know best—the human nature De Witt Clinton, in whose steps you evidently aspire to tread, comprehended and took into the reckoning. Be practical as he was practical—as you were in the early days of our acquaintance. I no longer ask you to sign the bill; I respect your punctilio. I only beg that you will permit this measure which your party has espoused to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... fame of his exploits, in order to do away with the imputation of envy, that it would appear I am in danger of being rivalled by every obscure person, but not by himself, because, as he enjoys an eminence above every body else, an eminence to which I do not dissemble that I also aspire, he is unwilling that I should be placed upon a level with him. He has represented himself as an old man, and as one who has gone through every gradation of honour, and me as below the age even of his son; as if he supposed that the desire of glory did not exceed the limits of human ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... aspire to fill a better position than he holds, unless he had developed a capacity beyond the limitations of his present work. The shipping clerk who craves the higher salary of a correspondent knows he cannot hope for the desired promotion if he has not learned ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... could possibly, I believe, have shaken! What, therefore, was my secret alarm, when first I was conscious of the force of her attractions, and found my mind wholly occupied with admiration of her excellencies! All that pride could demand, and all to which ambition could aspire, all that happiness could covet, or the most scrupulous delicacy exact, in her I found united; and while my heart was enslaved by her charms, my understanding exulted in its fetters. Yet to forfeit my name, to give up for-ever a family which upon ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue described by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all human creatures seem to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties in the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in the breast of everyone to be still creating ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the Low Countries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal. ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... millions of men;—Nirwana, the end of successive existences, that state which has no relation to matter, or space, or time, to which the departing flame of the extinguished taper has gone. It is the supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the object to which we ought to aspire, and for that purpose we should seek to destroy within ourselves all cleaving to existence, weaning ourselves from every earthly object, from every earthly pursuit. We should resort to monastic life, to penance, to self-denial, self-mortification, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... he conceived would fit his needs, and an ambition. This last was nothing less than to strike it rich and set himself up among the eminently bourgeois of London. It seemed that the situation of the wealthy English middle class, with just enough gentility above to aspire to, and sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, appealed to his imagination, though of course he did not put it ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... tempt me—when she herself displays the matchless store of her countless fascinations for my attraction—when she honors me by special favors and makes me plainly aware that I am not too presumptuous in venturing to aspire to her hand in marriage—what can I do but accept with a good grace the fortune thrown to me by Providence? I should be the most ungrateful of men were I to refuse so precious a gift from Heaven, and I confess I feel no inclination to reject what I consider ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... woman. Only statues and the beautiful dead dream-women, vanished with the neiges d'antan. What did it matter whom I married? Perhaps you would have had me aspire higher than a grisette? To a tradesman's daughter? Or a demoiselle in society? 'Explain my position?'—a poor exile's position—to some double-chinned bourgeois papa who can only see that my immortal ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... deliver and separate the soul from the body.... Therefore it would be foolish if a man, who all his life has taken measures to be as near death as possible, should, when it comes, rebel against it.... In truth the real seekers after wisdom aspire to die, and of all men they are those who least fear death." Moreover Socrates bases all higher morality on liberation from the body. He who only follows what his body ordains is not moral. Who is valiant? asks Socrates. He is valiant who does not obey his body but the demands of his spirit ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... the son of a peasant," replied Pierre, bowing, and casting his eyes to the ground, "and you may think it presumption, indeed, for me to aspire to the hand of your noble daughter. But a peasant's love is as pure as the love of a prince; and a peasant's heart may ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... with inspiring vehemence, "and is not the utterly unworthy person before you indebted to you in a double measure that life is still within him? Is not the strength which now promotes him to such exceptional audacity as to aspire to your lovely hand, of your own creating? Only encourage Ling to entertain a well-founded hope that on his return he shall not find you partaking of the wedding feast of some wealthy and exceptionally round-bodied Mandarin, and this person will accomplish the journey to ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... the great John L., we suppose that "Handsome Jim" Corbett is the only old time champion who can at all aspire to Sullivan's place in ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... her appraisingly. "It's the kind most women aspire to," he answered enigmatically. He imparted to this obscure remark the air of passing a ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... wealthy that few of them could pretend to aspire to her, so she selected for her chattel a young man called Willy Liston; a youth of an unhappy turn—he contributed nothing to hilarity, his face was a kill-joy—nobody liked him; for this female reason Christie ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... it, there was hung A stocking by the fire To wear which no one over-young Could fittingly aspire: Long, slender, graceful—it was just The thing to fill the heart Of Mrs. C. with deep distrust; ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... vanities; and they who prize and commend beauty, or fashion, or dress, or frivolous accomplishments, may be guilty of this folly; but not the parent or the person who commends in a child those things which are really commendable, and after which it is his greatest glory to aspire. ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... bulk of nominal Christians are defective. This they freely declare (secretly feeling perhaps some complacency from the frankness of the avowal) to be a higher strain of piety than that to which they aspire. Their forgetfulness also of some of the leading dispositions of Christianity, is undeniably apparent in their allowed want of the spirit of kindness, and meekness, and gentleness, and patience, and long suffering; and above all, of that ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... question of sleeping-quarters. As usual, the mind of the male was made up, and he planted himself in the darkest corner of the upper perch away from the window, shook himself out, and considered the matter decided. The meek little new-comer did not aspire to his corner, but she ardently desired a place on that farther perch, and after he became quiet she resolved to try for it. Too modest to approach it in the natural way, from the lower perches, she scrambled up the wires of the cage, and shyly came on from the back. The ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... have words. They ain't always bestowed together. When they are, why, then, I reckon, them are the book-writers. Sonny he's got purty consider'ble o' both for his age, but, of co'se, he wouldn't never aspire to put nothin' he could think up into no printed book, I don't reckon; though he's got three blank books filled with the routine of "out-door housekeeping," ez he calls it, the way it's kep' by varmints an' ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... wrong not to seek to be free." Says the sage Politician, "Your natural share Of talents would raise you much higher, Than thus to crawl on in your present low sphere, And it 's wrong in you not to aspire." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... midnight parties, at gay suppers, at garish dances, where Gorgio ladies answered the amorous looks of the ambitious Romany with the fiddle at his chin. Because these young Romanys knew they dare not aspire, they were resentful; but Jethro, the head of the rival family and the son of the dead claimant to the headship, had not such compulsory modesty. He had ranged far and wide, and his expectations were extensive. He was nowhere to be seen in the groups which sang and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... wits in the present day?" to which I assenting, he adds "I had always thought that Rogers had been reckon'd the Prince of Wits, but I suppose that now Mr. Hood has the better title to that appellation." To which I replied that Mr. R. had wit with much better qualities, but did not aspire to the principality. He had taken all the puns manufactured in John Bull for our friend, in sad and stupid earnest. One ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... wooers heere? poore sillie men, Highly deceiv'd to gape for marriage heere Onely for gaine: I have another reache More high then their base spirits can aspire: Yet must I use this Doctors secret aide, That hath alreadie promist me a drug Whose vertue shall ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. But the just ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in perfect and continuall health: as also if the worst happen, death may at all times, and whensoever it shall please us, cut off all other inconveniences and crosses. But as for death, it is inevitable.] did ever attaine unto an absolute enjoying of it? The perfectest have beene content but to aspire and approach her, without ever possessing her. But they are deceived; seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the pursute of them is pleasant. The enterprise is perceived by the qualitie of the thing, which it hath regard unto: for it is a good portion of the effect, and consubstantiall. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... scene, plot, motives, and characters, the copyright works of Edward S. Ellis have been deservedly popular with the youth of America. In a community where every native-born boy can aspire to the highest offices, such a book as Ellis' "From the Throttle to the President's Chair," detailing the progress of the sturdy son of the people from locomotive engineer to the presidency of a great railroad, must always be popular. The youth of the land which boasts of a Vanderbilt will ever ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... rights as soul to body,—the right of a man to himself. Both are condemned; but their relative condemnation must be measured by their relative characters. As Freedom is more than property, as Man is above the dollar that he owns, as heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than earth, where every accumulation of wealth must ever remain, so are the rights assailed by an American Congress higher than those once assailed by the British Parliament. And just in this degree must history condemn the Slave Act more ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... he yielded to the allure of Valencia Van Tyle, admitting a finish of beauty to which mere youth could not aspire, all that was idealistic in him went out to the younger cousin whose admiration and shy swift friendship he was losing. His vanity refused to accept this at first. She was a little piqued at him because of the growing intimacy with Valencia. That was ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... noticed the change, and innocently encouraged him to aspire. We must not blame her if she did. This is what woman's education makes of her. The most cultured women must be grateful and flattering toward the rudest men, if circumstances throw them together. Born to depend on somebody, they must depend on their inferiors when their ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Esteban, growing daily more bent and feeble, smiled delightedly before his last work; he was going to be the glory of his house! His name was Luna, and therefore he could aspire to anything without fear, because even Popes had ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... children are bent and their bones broken by jugglers when they train them. Bertrand himself felt an adoration for her surpassing ordinary human passion. When he reached the summit of a happiness to which in his wildest dreams he had never dared to aspire, the young count nearly lost his reason. In vain had his father, Charles of Artois (who was Count of Aire, a direct descendant of Philip the Bold, and one of the regents of the kingdom), attempted by severe ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not the humble heart aspire To the gross home of wealth and pride; Nor be it to a hearth allied That vaunts of many a ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... a minority, the power of the government should be divided among different competitors for the regency, the parliaments and people will find it still more easy to acquire and ascertain the liberty at which they aspire, because they will have the balance of power in their hands, and be able to make either scale preponderate. I could say a great deal more upon this subject; and I have some remarks to make relating ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Leonards. This indeed merits a closer study than can be given here, for it is the life led by vast numbers of prosperous New Yorkers who love both the excitement of the city and the repose of the country, and who aspire to unite the enjoyment of both in their daily existence. The suburbs of the metropolis stretch landward fifty miles in every direction; and everywhere are handsome villas like Leonard's, inhabited by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move; between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey by such creations as Little Nell, he reverses all he has been saying about the cultivated ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... those proper to five-and-twenty years of age; besides, the spirit of the times did not tend to melancholy, that is a modern sentiment, springing from the overthrow of fortunes and the weakness of man. In the eighteenth century it was rare to dream of abstract things, or aspire to the unknown: men went straight to pleasure, glory, or fortune, and all who were handsome, brave or intriguing could attain them. That was the time when people were not ashamed to be happy. Now mind governs matter so much that men dare not ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... enterprises—hitches in the negotiations of loans, delays, perhaps accidental, but annoying; changes of policy in certain firms who no longer cared to consider acreage as investment; and a curiously veiled antagonism to him in a certain railroad, the reorganisation of which he had dared once to aspire to. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... present. But what presents have you to make? And if you had any that were worthy of the least attention of so great a monarch, what proportion could they bear to the favor you would ask? Therefore, reflect well on what you are about, and consider, that you aspire to an object which it is impossible for ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... women in Europe, to whom these children are playthings. For her there is only Louis Delgado. It is her firing of his dreams which makes him aspire to a throne. It is she who has the determination. He can see visions of power only in the colors of his absinthe glass. She uses men to her ends. Lapas is the latest—unless—" Blanco paused—"unless he is playing two parts, and really serves ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... his son with a sneer on his face, which was called forth by the thought that any one, least of all his bitter personal enemy, should aspire to hold any relations with this paragon ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... part, at their election, aged men. Power was, therefore, incessantly passing into new hands. Every election was a revolution in prospects and expectations. In a community where all might rise, where all might aspire to all, it necessarily followed that every man was occupied in thrusting some other into the background. Though the population of the city at the inception of the Reformation had sunk to eighty thousand, there ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults—a glory proud women ever aspire to—was, at present, the ambition of Miss Milner. She, who, as Dorriforth's ward had ever been gentle, and always obedient, became as a mistress, sometimes haughty, always insolent. He was surprised, but the novelty ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... read. Good simple man, he will never get through a page of that abstruse work; and my hostess will understand nothing. Is it not strange—these people were peasants a generation ago; they are peasants now by their goodness, hospitality, religion, superstition, and yet they aspire to be eclectic philosophers? Varvara Ilinitchna has life itself to read, and she turns away to look at books. Life does not satisfy her—there are great empty places in it, and she would be bored often but that she has books to open in these ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... my heart's bird! Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard. Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie Jarred horrid notes and the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away, For why should peeping chick aspire To ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... Be more than thou canst understand, Revering him whose power of bliss, Angelic, dares to seize her hand, Or whose seraphic love makes flight To the apprehension of her lips; And think, the sun of such delight From thine own darkness takes eclipse. And, wouldst thou to the same aspire, This is the art thou must employ, Live greatly; so shalt thou acquire ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... their minds to send Philip to King's School at Tercanbury. The neighbouring clergy sent their sons there. It was united by long tradition to the Cathedral: its headmaster was an honorary Canon, and a past headmaster was the Archdeacon. Boys were encouraged there to aspire to Holy Orders, and the education was such as might prepare an honest lad to spend his life in God's service. A preparatory school was attached to it, and to this it was arranged that Philip should go. Mr. Carey took him into Tercanbury one Thursday afternoon towards the end of September. All day ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... encouragers of heresy; so that not one of them can ever be king of France, where there have been such religious princes in time past, who have justly merited the name of Most Christian; and so there is no possibility of permitting him or any of his house to aspire to the throne, or to have the subject even treated of in the estates. It should on the contrary be entirely excluded as prejudicial to the realm and unworthy to be even mentioned among persons so Catholic as those about to meet ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
