Such joy ambition finds.
Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise.
By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd,
And chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost!
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.
Licet ipsa vitium sit ambitio, frequenter tamen causa virtutum est.
Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.
Ambition is no cure for love!
O fading honours of the dead!
O high ambition, lowly laid!
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Ill-weav'd ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
When that this body did contain a spirit,
A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
But now, two paces of the vilest earth
Is room enough.
Virtue is chok'd with foul ambition.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition.
By that sin fell the angels; how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
’Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Ambition's debt is paid.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.
Ambition is our idol, on whose wings
Great minds are carry'd only to extreme;
To be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
Si vis ad summum progredi ab infimo ordire.
If you wish to reach the highest, begin at the lowest.
Ambition destroys its possessor.
And mad ambition trumpeteth to all.
How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unreined ambition!
Ambition has but one reward for all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in. and a fading name!
Too low they build who build beneath the stars.
AMERICA
E pluribus unum.
From many, one.
Ex pluribus unum facere.
From many to make one.
Yet, still, from either beach,
The voice of blood shall reach,
More audible than speech,
"We are one!"
