| Quote | Author | Source | Email Quote |
|---|
| " . . . women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours---ambition is the serious business of life." | Sir Walter Scott | Ivanhoe |  |
| You know that he came into his uncle's money a little time ago, and after a first delirious outbreak, he has now relapsed into that dead heavy state of despair which is caused by having everything which one can wish for. How absurd are the ambitions of life when I think that I, who am fairly happy and as keen as a razor edge, should be struggling for that which I can see has brought neither profit nor happiness to him! | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | The Stark Munro Letters | |
| Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. | Charles Dickens | Dombey and Son | |
| While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas. | Charles Dickens | Little Dorrit | |
| For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement. | Lucy Maud Montgomery | Anne of Green Gables | |
| "To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained--who can say this is not greatness . . . " | William Makepeace Thackeray | The Virginians | |
| "Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,"' the Mock Turtle replied; "and then the different branches of Arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision." | Lewis Carroll | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | |
I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels. | William Shakespeare | Henry VIII | |
