Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
Accurst ambition, now dearly i have bought you.
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as much as the trumper clang of another's fame.
O cursed ambition, thou devouring bird, how dost thou from the field of honesty pick every gain of profit or delight, and mock the reaper's toil!
Ambition: The glorious frailty of the noble mind.
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
A slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose side may contribute to the advancement of his fortune.
Ambition is but avarice on stilts and masked.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
Ambition is a lust that's never quenched, grows more inflamed, and madder by enjoyment.
Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.
'Tis a common proof, that lowliness is Edward Young ambition's ladder, where to the climber upwards turns his face; but when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks into the clouds scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.
Ambition's like a circle on the water, which never ceases to enlarge itself,'till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
Vaulting ambition which o'er leaps itself.
Airy ambition, soaring high.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
What is ambition? 'Tis a glorious cheat. Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly the sapphire walls of heaven.
Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in and a fading name!
