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Ambitious   /æmbˈɪʃəs/   Listen
Ambitious

adjective
1.
Having a strong desire for success or achievement.
2.
Requiring full use of your abilities or resources.  Synonym: challenging.  "Performed the most challenging task without a mistake"



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"Ambitious" Quotes from Famous Books



... discussed who should be his successor in the government in the event of his death. Villa Corta argued that it fell to him as senior magistrate. The discussion came to the knowledge of Anda, and seriously aroused his jealousy. Fearing conspiracy against his ambitious projects, he left his camp at Polo, and hastened to interrogate Villa Corta, who explained that he had only made casual remarks in the course of conversation. Anda, however, was restless on the subject of the succession, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... and indeed in comedy which bordered on farce. But we are inclined to infer from some passages, both in Cecilia and Camilla, that she might have attained equal distinction in the pathetic. We have formed this judgment, less from those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catastrophe of each of those novels, than from some exquisite strokes of natural tenderness which take us here and there by surprise. We would mention as examples, Mrs. Hill's account of her little boy's death in Cecilia, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... upon the record that any of these men—of either the restless and ambitious, or of the better class—were literally sent away. But such has been the politic practice of this church for many ages; and we may safely believe, that when she was engaged in an unscrupulous and desperate contest for the recovery, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... 1864 Bradford, the marine artist, being ambitious to paint icebergs in their native wilds, organized a sailing party for Labrador and invited Wasson to go with them. This was the first enterprise of the kind that gave him permanent benefit. Fortunately they encountered no severe storms. The cool, bracing air of the polar regions was better than ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... chooses His agents for further work from those who, out of their own spontaneous love of Him, have done what lay at their hands. 'To him that hath shall be given.' If you are ambitious of a wider sphere, be sure that you fill your narrow one. It will widen quite ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... him, to a couch harder than he was accustomed to stretch himself upon, the same ambitious thoughts and political perplexities which drive sleep from the softest down that ever spread a bed of state. He had sailed long enough amid the contending tides and currents of the time to be sensible of their peril, and of the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... Laud, a tyrannical, ambitious man, and a servile creature of the King, mentioned before, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, continuing Bishop of London at the same time. Charles I. was strongly inclined to Romanism, Laud also leaned that way, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... was an attempt to create, in defiance of the public, in contemptuous disregard of established "literary opinion," a sort of prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be the active centre of energy for a new generation, and there were five founders, each of whom was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in verse. At Creteil there was a printing-press in a great park, so that the members should be altogether independent of the outside world. The poets were to cultivate the garden and keep house ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... Fraser considered an organ an unmixed evil and remarked, when asked for his opinion on the subject, that it would be "clean defyin' o' the Almighty" to introduce one into the church. But he had a very ambitious wife and daughter, and as the latter had been taking music lessons and cherishing rosy dreams of one day playing in church, the organ party felt that Mr. Fraser would not be quite immovable. Old John Hamilton, of course, scarcely ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... average of his class. He was sensible of a certain superiority, yet it was not from the contemplation of this that he drew his elation. He saw the issue quite clearly and knew the pathway which must be trodden. He was not personally ambitious for the sake of making an impression or gaining power. He knew that in too many cases men had in the past made their position a sinecure in the Labor Movement and he condemned their action. The Movement must be ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... any one, except perhaps Lisbeth Longfrock, sorrowed particularly over her; but Lisbeth could not help remembering that Crookhorn had given them milk for their coffee that winter up at Peerout Castle. At any rate, if not much sorrowed for, the queer, ambitious creature was held in honorable esteem after her death. Such horns as hers Ole had never seen. Not only were they extremely large, but they gave out a peculiarly fine sound. Any one would know at once that they were ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... wind blew, and steadily the vessel sailed on; till higher grounds began to rise on either side of her, and hills stood back of hills, ambitious of each other's standing, and threw their deep shadows all along the margin of the river. As the sloop entered between these narrowing and lifting walls of the river channel, the draught of air became ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... the "tiring-room" have always presented themselves in a ludicrous light to the ordinary observer. There is always a jumble of incongruous articles, and a striking contrast between the ambitious pretensions of things and their real meanness—between the facts and fictions of theatrical life. Mr. Collier quotes from Brome's comedy, "The Antipodes," 1640, a curious account of the contents of the "tiring-house" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... good easy man (vir sua sorte contentus is Gerald's description of him), the king could tolerate, but he could not contemplate without uneasiness the combination of spiritual and political power in South Wales in the hands of two able, ambitious, and energetic kinsmen, such as he knew Gerald and the Lord Rhys to be. Gerald had made no secret of his admiration for the martyred St. Thomas e Becket. He fashioned himself upon him as Becket did on Anselm. The part which Becket played in England he would like ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... minister of war; with it he combined the ministry of the marine. The foreign affairs were intrusted to the Duke of Praslin, his cousin. The power rested almost entirely in the hands of the Duke of Choiseul. Of high birth, clever, bold, ambitious, he had but lately aspired to couple the splendor of successes in the fashionable world with the serious preoccupations of politics; his marriage with Mdlle. Crozat, a wealthy heiress, amiable and very much smitten with him, had strengthened ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... northern side was filled up entirely into a solid wall, which went up to join the roof that had just been put on. The space between the pent-house and the drift on the south wall was left open as an exit. But now we had the building fever on us, and one ambitious project succeeded another. Thus we agreed to dig a passage the whole length of the drift, and terminate it by a large snow-hut, in which we were to have a vapour bath. That was something like a plan — ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... Walling, whose little book adds considerably to our knowledge of Borrow's Cornish relatives, and is in every way a valuable monograph on the author of Lavengro. Mr. Herbert Jenkins's book is more ambitious. Within four hundred closely printed pages he has compressed every incident in Borrow's career, and we would not quarrel with him nor his publisher for calling his life a 'definitive biography' if one did not know that there is not and cannot ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... happy and tranquil, if not very ambitious existence stretches before us. We are both in our twenty-fifth year, and I suppose that without presumption we can reckon that thirty-five more years lie in front of us. I can foresee the gradually increasing routine of work, the wider circle of friends, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... of course, within the limits of this little volume, to give even the main results in so many great chapters of this ambitious and growing science. I shall not attempt that; but the rather select from the various departments certain outstanding results and principles. From these as elevations the reader may see the mountains on the horizon, so to speak, which at his leisure, and with ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... story would give it its original ending—then you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be better than the old one. But the story which called out the most persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with. The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read it in a volume of 'sketches ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their ruined state these Doric temples give an irresistible impression of a great idea, a great architectural epic, in which each detail, however beautiful, was subordinated to the unity of the conception as a whole. It is this abstract quality which lifts Greek Doric so far above the ambitious art of later ages, and indeed above all but the very finest work of any period ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... encouragement and heartiness of cooeperation which was so nobly, so generously manifested; and it was sincere enough to insure the very result of contentment and satisfaction which they were so wise as to anticipate. But the Governor thought,—The Drummer is getting ambitious; he wants a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... a thing which cannot be a predicate to thought, is an apodeictic and identical proposition. But this proposition does not signify that I, as an object, am, for myself, a self-subsistent being or substance. This latter statement- an ambitious one—requires to be supported by data which are not to be discovered in thought; and are perhaps (in so far as I consider the thinking self merely as such) not to be discovered in the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... always has another chance in his descendants; for he will of necessity be ennobled through the merits of those who succeed him. Such is the immemorial law of the land. Fame is retroactive. This admirable system has only one objection: it is posthumous in its effect. An ambitious man who unfortunately lacks ability himself has to wait too long for vicarious recognition. The objection is like that incident to the making of a country seat out of a treeless plain by planting the same with saplings. About the time the trees begin to be worth ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... us is not so? He was ambitious—who among us is ashamed to own that 'last infirmity of noble minds!' He was avaricious, my readers will say. No—it was not for love of lucre that he wished to be bishop of Barchester. He was his father's only child, and his father had left him great wealth. His preferment brought him in nearly ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the former, and thus he is enabled to keep the country in a state of tranquillity and in subjection to the Pashas. This policy has long been successful, notwithstanding the turbulent spirit of the mountaineers, the continual party feuds, and the ambitious projects of many chiefs, as well of the Druses as of the reigning house; the Pashas were careful also not to permit any one to become too powerful; the princes of the reigning family were continually changed; and party spirit ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... yer Anselme would come ouer, bicause he doubted to be had in suspicion of an ambitious desire in seeking to be made archbishop of Canturburie. For it was talked that if he went ouer into England, he should surelie be elected before he returned into Normandie. But at length so it chanced, that the aforesaid Hugh earle of Chester fell ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... for his new settlement were ambitious, and he built a number of substantial roads through the forests, usually following the old Indian trails, now the right of way of the New York Central and other lines. With the opening of the Ohio Canal to the Ohio River (1832), Cleveland became the natural outlet on Lake Erie for Ohio's extensive ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... married S. John Robsartes daughter; after wich mariage ther were certain gentlemen that did strive who shuld first take away a gose's heade wich was hanged alive on tow crose postes." Soon after the accession of Elizabeth, when Dudley's ambitious views of a royal alliance had opened upon him, his countess mysteriously died at the retired mansion of Cumnor near Abingdon,[2] Sept. 8, 1560; and, although the mode of her death is imperfectly ascertained (her body was thrown down stairs, as a blind,) there ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various

... Noble had had proper pride he would have resented the insolent assumption of superiority in this speech, but he was content to play second fiddle to Randolph Duncan. His family, like himself, were ambitious to be on good terms with the leading families in the village, and did ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... Prince Serganoff," said the old man slowly, "and his Highness is an ambitious man. Many things can happen in our Russia, little lady. If the Grand ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... blood, that his pleasures shall never bring down any evil upon him, that there is no power in the universe that can hurt him, and with what an abandonment would he surrender himself to his carnal elysium. Tell the ambitious man, fired with visions of fame and glory, that he may banish all fears of a final account, that he may make himself his own deity, and breathe in the incense of worshipers, without any rebuke from Him who says: "I am God, and my glory I will not give to another,"-assure ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... M. Comte's conception of Positive Philosophy, it remains to give some account of his more special and equally ambitious attempt to create the Science of Sociology, or, as he expresses it, to elevate the study of social phaenomena to ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... choler; which is an humor that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped. But if it be stopped, and cannot have his way, it becometh adust, and thereby malign and venomous. So ambitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous; but if they be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent, and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best pleased, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... placed in the sea, and how hazardous it is to expose oneself and one's goods to its mercy, has remarked, with much reason, that it is infinitely preferable to be poor on shore than to be rich at sea. In which saying he mocks indeed at those ambitious, avaricious, and mercenary men who, in order to gain false glory and the things of this world, expose themselves rashly to the manifest perils which are most of the time the inevitable lot of the seaman. This same consideration causes him ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... banished the banner-men from the side-walks, the various trades have taken to representing themselves in odd costumes on the backs of ambitious patterers. Just now walking awnings, barber's poles, whalebones, etc., are the rage. Like everything else in a city, this will be tolerated until it becomes a nuisance, when the police will take them off to the station-house and they will be among ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... But ambitious newspaper reporters bent themselves to this new task, as is their custom in all matters of public concern, i. e., to outrival the most noted expert in the line of that particular phase of public endeavor uppermost at the time. Theories ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... Tivoli was closely copied, and applied to a long faade, too low for its length and with no sufficient stylobate, but fairly effective with its recessed colonnade and unpierced walls. The British Museum, by Robert Smirke (Fig. 198), was a more ambitious essay in a more purely Greek style. Its colossal Ionic colonnade was, however, amere frontispiece, applied to a badly planned and commonplace building, from which it cut off needed light. The more modest but appropriate columnar faade to the Fitzwilliam ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... overview: In January 1994, Senegal undertook a bold and ambitious economic reform program with the support of the international donor community. This reform began with a 50% devaluation of Senegal's currency, the CFA franc, which was linked at a fixed rate to the French franc. Government price controls and subsidies have ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... was asked if he would quit the island of which he had undertaken the protection, supposing a foreign power should create him a Marischal, and make him governour of a province; he replied, "I hope they will believe I am more honest, or more ambitious; for," said he, "to accept of the highest offices under a foreign power would ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... a day of glory in the history of the Division. Conferences of Generals, and dashing to and fro of despatch-riders, produced ambitious plans for an advance that would more than make up for the set-back of August 30. A brigade of our own Divisional Infantry was again to descend upon the village of Combles, while another brigade, working on the flank, would effect a turning movement northwards ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... told of a farmer who experienced great difficulty in keeping a particular hen inside the run which he had built outside the hen house. He had put up a wire fence high enough, as he thought, to keep in the most ambitious chicken. In fact, he argued that no hen could fly over it. One hen persisted in getting out regularly, though the farmer could never discover how she did it. Finally he decided to lay for her (she laid for him regularly). To his great surprise, he watched her walk around ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... has lost its favor for him, and, while it is not unwelcome, it does not stimulate him to renewed exertions as it did when he began his career. It is entirely different with the man who is trying to establish himself in the major league. An ambitious young player thinks that the game depends upon him, and is dead sure that every crank agrees with him. Give him a good send-off in the papers, or let his manager commend him for a creditable piece of work, and he will break his neck in his efforts to deserve another installment ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... a dirty bar-room. It was a small room, with a stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit of the "spitters," a bar across one end—a mere counter with a sliding glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels, and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like women in a paradisaic ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... could lighten her mother's load—perhaps secure her future ease; and she would do her task well, thoroughly, keeping a steady heart and a bright face. Then, should the tide ever turn, what deep draughts of pleasure she would drink! Katherine was not socially ambitious; finery and grandeur as such did not attract her; but real joys, beauty and gayety, the company of pleasant people, i.e. people who suited her, graceful surroundings, becoming clothes, and plenty of them, all were dear ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... dissimulation so profound! But still, that such a one should seduce my husband; young, generous, ambitious, impatient of contumely and reproach, and surely not indifferent; before this fatal intercourse, not indifferent to his wife and child!—Yet ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... carrier of that thoroughly pro-slavery sheet. "Sam" had possessed himself somehow of a knowledge of reading and writing a little, and for the news of the day he had quite an itching ear. Also with regard to his freedom he was quite solicitous. Being of an ambitious turn of mind, he hired his time, for which he paid his master $175 per annum in regular quarterly payments. Besides paying this amount, he had to find himself in board, clothing, and pay doctor's expenses. He had had more than one owner in his life. The last one, however, he spoke of thus: ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... be denied that Marius had the least important share in the actual successes: the conquest of Numidia up to the edge of the desert was the work of Metellus, the capture of Jugurtha was the work of Sulla, and between the two Marius played a part somewhat compromising the dignity of an ambitious upstart. Marius reluctantly tolerated the assumption by his predecessor of the name of conqueror of Numidia; he flew into a violent rage when king Bocchus afterwards consecrated a golden effigy at the Capitol, which represented the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Rome, under the pontificates of Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., set no bounds to their ambitious projects, they were opposed by the Emperor Frederick; who was of course anathematised. A curate of Paris, a humorous fellow, got up in his pulpit with the bull of Innocent in his hand. "You know, my brethren (said he), that I am ordered to proclaim an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... promote the elevation of his daughter and his son-in-law to the throne of a sovereign prince. A titular prince Zebek already was: but this dignity, without the substantial accompaniment of a sceptre, 25 seemed but an empty sound to both of these ambitious rebels. The other accomplice, whose name was Loosang-Dchaltzan, and whose rank was that of Lama, or Kalmuck pontiff, was a person of far more distinguished pretensions; he had something of the same 30 gloomy and terrific pride ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... from Mrs. Rice, wife of Rev. O. V. Rice, who has charge of our mission at this prosperous and ambitious metropolis of Southern California, prompts me to give my space this month to a review of our work there. It had already begun when, twenty-two years ago, I became superintendent. I tried to visit it in the spring of 1874, but a severe ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various

... Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, That holds the treasures of the universe! All possibilities are in its hands, No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands; In its sublime audacity of faith, "Be thou removed!" it to the mountain saith, And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, Ascends the ladder leaning on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... her as if the safety of the kingdom had depended on her own personal efforts. For some time crowds of lazzaroli gathered around the entrance of the Molo to see the young and beautiful captain who had achieved such wonders; and we can fancy how sweetly would ring on the ears of our ambitious heroine the shout of the enthusiastic crowd sending far and wide the "Erira Carlo Pimontel!" The King confirmed her position of captain, and sent her the iron and golden crosses of honor, only given to the bravest of the brave in those ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... his three brothers leased the ground fronting the Thames, upon which the Adelphi now stands, for L. 1200 on a ninety-nine years' lease, and having obtained, with the assistance of Lord Bute, the needful act of parliament, proceeded, in the teeth of public opposition, to erect the ambitious block of buildings which is imperishably associated with their name, indicating its joint origin by the title Adelphi, from the Greek adelfoi, the Brothers. The site presented attractive possibilities. A steep hill led down Buckingham ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... threatened with failure. The permanent occupation of the Liao-Tung peninsula by Japan meant that she had to deal, not with an effete and waning power which she might threaten and cajole, but with a new and ambitious civilization which had just given proof of surprising ability. After vast expenditure of energy and treasure and diplomacy, access to the sea was ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... dollars would buy pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July, and August and save fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's diversion with it at faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would furnish an education to an ambitious boy. I am told that a genuine Corot was secured for that amount in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a New Hampshire town and live respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison Square Garden for one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... Copronymus, and his grandson Leo, surnamed Chazarus, three successive emperors, had established, with all their power, the heresy of the Iconoclasts, or image-breakers, in the {464} East. The empress Irene, wife to the last, was always privately a Catholic, though an artful, ambitious woman. Her husband dying miserably in 780, after a five years' reign, and having left his son Constantine, but ten years old, under her guardianship, she so managed the nobility in her favor as to get the regency and whole government ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... certain Fray Jhoan de Amorin, who with the said father Fray Lorenco de Leon went from this province to the province of Mexico, returning again with a very bad reputation and the name of having a restless disposition, ambitious and injurious to all, and personally vicious and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson

... clubs overflowing with local susceptibilities and traditions. Thus Yumina passed two or three years in utter solitude, of which she was able to turn to good account all the bitterness of heart and all the leisure hours; for she was an ambitious woman of extraordinary strength of will and obstinacy. She learned the French language thoroughly, said adieu forever to her embroidered jackets and pink silk trousers, succeeded in adapting her figure and ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... want the fibre needful for the doing it. It may be that such a one will earn his bread as Sir Thomas Underwood had earned his, not flinching from routine task or even from the healthy efforts necessary for subsistence. But there will ever be present to the mind of the ambitious man the idea of something to be done over and above the mere earning of his bread;—and the ambition may be very strong, though the fibre be lacking. Such a one will endure an agony protracted for years, always intending, never performing, self-accusing through every wakeful hour, self-accusing ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... selfishness, and immorality produced by the long series of foreign conquests and robberies in which the Roman people had been engaged. The days of liberty at Rome were over. From this time forward the government was really in the hands of ambitious and popular leaders, or of corrupt combinations and "rings." Events gather about a few great names, and the annals of the republic become ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... the country, would be gravely considered. [311] Nobunaga had taught Buddhism a severe lesson about the danger of such intriguing. Iyeyasu decided that the Jesuit intrigues had a political object of the most ambitious kind; but he was more patient than Nobunaga. By 1603 he, had every district of Japan under his yoke; but he did not issue his final edict until eleven years later. It plainly declared that the foreign priests were plotting to get control of the government, and to obtain ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... Christmas party was talked about and written about to an extent that she had not anticipated in her most ambitious moments. The letters from Waldo's mother would alone ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... return (Beauvais'); and, lastly, his apparent determination 'that nobody should have anything to do with the proceedings except himself.' It seems to me unquestionable that Beauvais was a suitor of Marie's; that she coquetted with him; and that he was ambitious of being thought to enjoy her fullest intimacy and confidence. I shall say nothing more upon this point; and, as the evidence fully rebuts the assertion of L'Etoile, touching the matter of apathy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... neither have its fair play nor its just reward, by a variety of institutions, which, while they prevent those who have no property from invading the social commonwealth, in whose classes every industrious citizen has a right to register himself, offer also an equally powerful check to the ambitious fancies of those great families, over whose liberal principles and huge incomes the Whig-Radical writers gloat with the self-complacency of lackeys at the equipages of their masters. There is ever an union in a perverted sense between those who are beneath power and those ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... divine law by which the work of freemen shall root out the work of slaves; and no law enacted by the will of Northern doughfaces could repeal this statute of nature. These Northern friends of the aristocracy supposed themselves to be helping their ambitious allies by their political support. But the slaveholders knew how fallacious was this aid. They saw that the North was gaining a huge superiority to the South; that the people were slowly consolidating; that when the free-labour interest did finally concentrate, it would carry every ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... but he preferred not to display to the father of Clara's offspring his avuncular patronage of George Cannon, and he chose the works of a customer down at Shawport for whom he was printing a somewhat ambitious catalogue. He would call at the works and talk about the catalogue, and then incidentally mention that his young friend desired to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... the chronicles of olden France and England; and it promises note in the history of our own times; since to this monastic spot will the political balance of France, in all probability, exile the person of the ambitious Polignac, ex-minister of France. The reader will perhaps suspect the political concatenation of Lulworth Castle, the Hotel de Ville, and the Palais Royal in our last volume; and the Prison of Vincennes and Mount St. Michael in the present. Instead of catching ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... clerk in a large banking house, Mr. Bly was somewhat youthful and imaginative, and regarded the ascent as part of that "Excelsior" climbing pointed out by a great poet as a praiseworthy function of ambitious youth. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... their loyalty to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions, for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike, although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings. Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific. Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national industries ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... see what I mean. In the earlier photographs his face is keen, alert, powerful, austere; you will read in it the rigidity of his Nonconformist upbringing, the seriousness of his Puritan inheritance, all the moral earnestness of a nobly ambitious character. In the later photographs one is struck by an increasing expression of festivity, not by any means that beautiful radiance of the human spirit which in another man was said to make his face at the age of seventy-two "a thanksgiving for ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... account of his deeds, man arrives at a better knowledge of life. Its law appears to him, and the law is this: Work out your mission. He who applies himself to aught else than the realization of this end, loses in living the raison d'etre of life. The egoist does so, the pleasure-seeker, the ambitious: he consumes existence as one eating the full corn in the blade,—he prevents it from bearing its fruit; his life is lost. Whoever, on the contrary, makes his life serve a good higher than itself, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... were encouraged, of craftsmen that were educated and of industries that were called into being by the spread of Buddhism.[15] It was not enough that village temples and town monasteries should be built, under an impulse that meant volumes for the development of the country. The ambitious leaders chose sightly spots on mountains whence were lovely vistas of scenery, on which to erect temples and monasteries, while it seemed to be their further ambition to allow no mountain peak to be inaccessible. With armies of workmen, supported by the contributions of the faithful who had ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... to find a new chancellor, for the ministry was believed to be moribund. Grafton offered the great seal to Charles Yorke, the second son of the famous chancellor, Hardwicke, who died in 1764. He had twice been attorney-general, and was an ambitious man. His brother, Lord Hardwicke, and Rockingham, to whose party he had attached himself, urged him not to accept the offer, and he declined it. On the 17th, George told him that if he did not accept the great seal then, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... first day when the truant officer had driven him into the educational fold, his problems had increased. It was not that he disliked school. On the contrary he was ambitious and made heroic efforts to keep up with the class; but it was up-hill work getting an education without text-books. The city, to be sure, furnished these to boys whose mothers applied for them in person, but Dan's mother never had time to come. The cause of most of his trouble, however, ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... conclude this Preface with a letter from Marguerite to Brantome; the first, he says, he received from her during her adversity ('son adversite' are his words),—being, as he expresses it, so ambitious ('presomptueux') as to have sent to inquire concerning her health, as she was the daughter and sister of the Kings, his masters. ("D'avoir envoye scavoir de ses nouvelles, mais quoy elle estoit fille et ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... She was ambitious for him, and dreamed of his winning world-wide fame. She loved him, and she felt that Francesca had caged him, as Francesca herself had once felt. She wished to remove him altogether from the latter's influence, both because she was frankly jealous of his friendship for the older woman, and ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... observing critically this blemish and that; and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose. "It will have been a prosperous picture to me," he said at last, "if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious." ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... each other. The Cherokees of the hills, the Otari, spoke a dialect that could not be understood by the Cherokees of the lowlands, or Erati. Towns or bands continually broke up and split off from their former associations, while ambitious and warlike chiefs kept forming new settlements, and if successful drew large numbers of young warriors from the older communities. Thus the boundary lines between the confederacies were ever shifting.[2] Judging from a careful comparison ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... to yourself the situation, and then laugh at your friend as he has laughed at himself many a time. On the one side— the Gilmore side—a large fortune and no lack of pride; an intelligent, shrewd, and practical father; an ambitious and vain mother; an affectionate but spoilt boy; and a girl of nineteen, surpassingly lovely, with a cultivated mind and great good sense. On the other hand, you have Henry Warren, aged twenty-nine; in his dreams the author of a famous work, or the commander-in-chief of the Northern armies, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various

... were extremely different, though each had their admirers while they remained single. Lady Bothwell had some touch of the old King's Copland blood about her. She was bold, though not to the degree of audacity; ambitious, and desirous to raise her house and family; and was, as has been said, a considerable spur to my grandfather, who was otherwise an indolent man; but whom, unless he has been slandered, his lady's influence involved in some political matters which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... for restraining the ambitious expenditure at weddings and funerals, as usual, most affected by those who could least afford it. [70] In 1494, they issued a pragmatic, prohibiting the importation or manufacture of brocades, or of gold or silver ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... be simple in its expression? Is it not always so—when the mood of mind it expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great emotion? But he uses—as we see—the terms "lustre" and "decoration"—as if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct and simple as the language of very childhood, and for ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... opera, there are plenty of them. Twice a week there is an organ recital in the Melbourne Town Hall. Hardly a night passes without a concert of some kind is going on. As in theatrical matters, Melbourne takes the lead in all things musical. Last Christmas-week it was actually so ambitious as to get up a Musical Festival. The Town Hall organ is excellent. A good concert will always draw well. Ketten—who was not a marvel—had crowded houses night after night, with no other attraction but his pianoforte. Wilheling, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... had lately been made Clerk of the Closet. This man, named Edward Petre, was descended from an honourable family. His manners were courtly: his speech was flowing and plausible; but he was weak and vain, covetous and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had access to the royal ear, he bore, perhaps, the largest part in the ruin ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... surveyed himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber's persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal. And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow. There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like it, if ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... may be taken broadly and applied to the stony and weed-grown ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is another: of all possible positions that of master of a school, or leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the most undesirable; in fact, the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... confidence to being admitted as a student at Hampton College and Industrial Institute. The resolution thus taken was the more extraordinary because the negro aspirant was still a mere boy, practically without means for such an ambitious enterprise, while he had no friends who could assist him in any adequate manner. He was also quite unused to travelling, and was so unacquainted with the map of his native State that he could not have pointed out the direction in which ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... France was to aid an abominable sedition, the very professed principle of which was an implacable hostility to nobility and gentry, and whose savage war-whoop was, "A l'Aristocrate!"—by which senseless, bloody cry they animated one another to rapine and murder; whilst abetted by ambitious men of another class, they were crushing everything respectable and virtuous in their nation, and to their power disgracing almost every name by which we formerly knew there was such a country ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the mass of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... to the light in which various parties of men in France from the beginning viewed the Austrian alliance, it may be sufficiently inferred that the joy on this occasion was far from universal. The royalists considered the event as fatal to the last hopes of the Bourbons; the ambitious generals despaired of any future dismemberment of the empire: the old republicans, who had endured Buonaparte's despotic power as the progeny of the revolution, looked forward with deep disgust to the rule of a dynasty proud of sharing the blood of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... on the same plan as the Ariel, and eleven of them were practically identical with her as regards size and speed; but the twelfth, the flagship of the aerial fleet, had been designed by Arnold on a more ambitious scale. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... I was ambitious—have you known The passion, father? You have not: A cottager, I marked a throne Of half the world as all my own, And murmured at such lowly lot— But, just like any other dream, Upon the vapor of the dew My own had past, did not the beam Of beauty which did while it thro' The minute—the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... the most ambitious of political programs, involving nothing short of a whole-nation-wide or world-wide revolution; but, except a solitary Congressman and seventeen members of State legislatures, Socialists so far have been elected only to local offices, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... business before breakfast; generally it must be owned, because he began the day penniless, and must earn his meal before he ate it. To-day it was different. He had four dollars left in his pocket-book; but this he had previously determined not to touch. In fact he had formed the ambitious design of starting an account at a savings' bank, in order to have something to fall back upon in case of sickness or any other emergency, or at any rate as a reserve fund to expend in clothing or other necessary articles when he required them. Hitherto he had been ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger

... was a college graduate, a trained athlete, and a bright and ambitious man, whose father was president of the company in New York which owned the extensive mills. It was deemed best to have a direct representative of the corporation on the ground, and Harvey qualified himself for the responsible ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... important episodes of that evolution was the "Mad Parliament"—derisively so called by the royal partisans—at which the Provisions of Oxford, long considered the rash innovations of an ambitious oligarchy, were promulgated. Of this Mad Parliament it has been said, "It would have been well for England if all parliaments had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... of Bitem, which, as all the world knows, lies at the very termination of Sir Peter's avenue, and has been held in leading-strings by him and his ancestors for time immemorial. Now Sir Peter was thus placed in the situation of an ambitious monarch, who, after having commenced a daring inroad into his enemy's territories, is suddenly recalled by an invasion of his own hereditary dominions. He was obliged in consequence to return from the half-won borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after the half-lost borough ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... investigating several subjects at once I was forsaking the fundamental principles of archaeology. If to-day I confess my mistake, if I acknowledge the incredible enthusiasm with which I was inspired by a far too ambitious scheme, I do so for the sake of the young, who will thus learn by my example to conquer their imagination. It is our most cruel foe. The student who has not succeeded in stifling it is lost for ever to erudition. I still ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France

... his speeches were those in which he endeavoured, by artful appeals to the good sense and patriotism of his hearers, to win them over to his views; and the frequent success that attended such efforts is their highest praise. He seldom attempted an ambitious flight, and when he did his best friends felt it was not his true line. He dealt but little in figurative language, except when argument failed him; still he has left some specimens of much beauty in this style. In his great speech introducing Catholic ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... is tall, slender, posee more or less, while Mrs. Talbot is prettily rounded, petite in every point, and nervously ambitious of winning the ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... makes clear the preceding injunction. He would restrain men from their unholy conceits. As before stated, every man is best pleased with his own ideas. Hence foolishness pervades the land. One, seeing another honored above himself, is restlessly ambitious to emulate that other. But he acts contrary to both teachings of Paul: Comparing himself to his inferiors or to his equals, he thinks he is far above them, and his own station most honorable. Comparing himself ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... the servants of God behold the wicked prospering and the just oppressed; when they see the ambitious, the covetous, the unscrupulous preferred and honored, and they themselves plotted against and rejected, their heart is not disturbed, because they know first of all that "to them that love God, all things work together unto good,"(110) and secondly, they ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan

... heard in Paris afterwards that he wasn't her husband at all, but a rich young Hungarian noble she was trying desperately hard to marry. The Count Albert had been sent to Monte Carlo by the young man's people to protect him from this ambitious lady, and right well he appears to have done the business, for he must have found her in Paris afterwards and offered her the hospitality of ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton

... great experiment of self-government fail not now. If you would gladden the hearts of our friends in other lands, the Brights and Cobdens, the Gasparins and Laboulayes, liberal men, who love truth, justice, right, freedom, who are 'one with their kind,' be ambitious of cooeperating with them in the work of human ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... drawing-room by the hospitable board. In a little while the door-bell rings, and the first visitor is ushered in by the pompous domestic in charge of the door. The first callers are generally young men, who are ambitious to make as many visits as possible. The old hands know where the best tables are set, and confine their attentions principally to them. The caller salutes the hostess and the ladies present, says it's a fine or a bad day, as the case may be, offers the compliments ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... who broke the order of customs; the malicious would perhaps lie about Can Mallorqui, which had as honorable a past as the best family on the island; even his own friends, when he should go to mass at San Jose, and all gathered in the cloister of the church, would imagine him an ambitious man who desired to convert his daughter into a fine senorita. And this was not all. There was the anger of the rivals to be reckoned with, the jealousy of those youths, dumb with surprise when he came in that stormy night and sat down beside Margalida. Certainly by this time ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... butterflies, moths or humming birds about others, each visitor choosing the restaurant most to his liking? With what infinite pains the wants of each guest are catered to! How relentlessly are pilferers punished! The endless devices of the more ambitious flowers to save their species from degeneracy by close inbreeding through fertilization with their own pollen, alone prove the operation of Mind through them. How plants travel, how they send seeds abroad in the world to found new colonies, might be studied with profit by Anglo-Saxon ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... an epitome of those men who spend a life-time hunting after wealth and glory, and who perish themselves at the moment they reach the pinnacle of their ambitious desires. Whence I conclude, my dear children, that there are nothing but beginnings and endings of unhappiness in this world, and that true felicity is only to be hoped for in ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... those who have denounced me as ambitious and presumptuous, in view of my persistence in this enterprise. I was but nine years from slavery. In point of mental experience, I was but nine years old. That one, in such circumstances, should aspire to establish ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... the one thing which had previously absorbed his life—the gaming-table. If his wife had been a good woman, or if she had loved him, he might have stayed his hand from baccarat. But Eleanor had married him simply because he was rich and good-natured and she was ambitious and poor; and after their marriage she plunged into the gayest of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... Without attempting the ambitious task of presenting a comprehensive sketch of the origin, rise, and fall of whale-fishing as a whole, it seems necessary to give a brief outline of that portion of the subject bearing upon the theme of the present book before plunging into the ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... would be difficult to cite an apter instance of wresting sound principles to one's own destruction. Whatever the antecedent provocation, this is no temper in which to effect military objects. It is indeed hard to believe that an army so little numerous as that of Brown could have accomplished the ambitious designs confided to it; but that does not affect the clear duty of affording it the utmost assistance that ingenuity could devise and energy effect. The words quoted were written August 10, but ignore entirely an alternative suggested in a letter received that day from the Secretary, dated July ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... and divisions among themselves. The conservative body you propose might be so constituted, as, while it would be an admirable sedative in a variety of smaller cases, might also be a valuable sentinel and check on the liberticide views of an ambitious individual. I am friendly to this idea. But the true barriers of our liberty in this country are our State governments: and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... named by Elizabeth to examine into Mary Stuart's conduct was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Be it that he was convinced of Mary's innocence, be it that he was urged by the ambitious project which since served as a ground for his prosecution, and which was nothing else than to wed Mary Stuart, to affiance his daughter to the young king, and to become regent of Scotland, he resolved to extricate her from her prison. Several members of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common ...
— The Federalist Papers

... and mildly would silence and instruct your adversary; it might make him reflect, and might, in time, bring him to the true religion. Sometimes a few words make a great impression and bring about conversion. St. Francis Xavier was a worldly young man, learned and ambitious, and he heard from St. Ignatius these words of Our Lord: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?" He went home and kept thinking of them till they impressed him so strongly that he gave up the world, became a priest and by his labors and ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... as you're ambitious, and are a very neat draughtsman, you shall try your hand on these proposals for a grammar-school. When your mind requires to be refreshed by change of occupation, Thomas Pinch will instruct you in the art of surveying ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... hath no holier ambition. Some there are who, denied opportunity, have sought out those ambitious to learn, and, educating them, have sent their own personality out through artists, jurists or authors they have trained. Herein is the test of the greatness of editor or statesman or merchant. He has so incarnated his ideas or ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... said, 'you will soon have to begin life for yourselves, and I hope you will do so with credit to your bringing up. I hope you are now ambitious enough to despise the dull old plan of dropping contentedly down, just where you happen to be, or waiting for some chance traveller (who may never come) to give you a lift elsewhere. That paradise of happiness, of which the lob-worm told us, is close at hand. Come! it only wants a little ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... fellers you seem to think are sort of brothers of yours—most of them came to times when they saw things topplin' down all round 'em. They sent your Napoleon to St. Helena an' a lot of others didn't do much better in the long run. Julius Caesar was pretty great an' pretty ambitious. He fell. There's a heap to be said fer livin' straight an' simple. We're self-respectin' men an' women with clean blood in our veins that don't have to bow down to no man. We've lived honest an' worked hard, but sometimes when spring ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... meager vestiges brought to light by researches in the mounds. Decorative borders and fanciful combinations of strands are shown in some of the preceding cuts, and figure 26, copied from a pottery fragment obtained in the Ohio valley, indicates a more ambitious attempt at embellishment. The fabric was evidently of ornate design ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes

... equal to that of Celeste, which she has in her own right, plus fifty thousand francs' worth of diamonds (as Mademoiselle Georges says on her posters in the provinces), and, moreover,—a fact which ought to strike the mind of an ambitious man,—a strong political influence, which she can use ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... determination of the College authorities to encourage students is evident from their establishing two exhibitions of the value of L10 each, to be awarded yearly to the two students standing highest in the matriculation examination. Professors might starve or freeze and creditors might wait, but ambitious and meritorious students ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... her Bertrand de Vandaleur was less helpful and practical than any Bertrand de Vandaleur before him, the more there seems to have developed in her the purpose and capability inherited from Mrs. Janet. Like many another poor and ambitious mother, she studied Latin and Greek and algebra that she might teach her son. And at the same time she saved, even out of their small income. She began to "put by" from the boy's birth for his education, and when the time came he was ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... dangerous, for they furnish the greatest number of recruits of schism, and, strange to say, for popery too. Search the list of those who have gone over to Rome, from Ahab Meldrum to Wilberforce, and you will find the majority were originally Puritans or infidels—men who were restless, and ambitious of notoriety, who had learning and talent, but wanted common sense. They set out to astonish the world, and ended by astonishing themselves. They went forth in pursuit of a name, and lost the only one they were known by. Who can recognise Newman in Father Ignatius, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... are ambitious, their subjects always suffer. All cases of ambitious kings are cases of ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... up. I never liked it,—I told you that before,—and I never took it up from any ambitious motive. It seemed a shame for me to be of no use in the world; and I hoped that I might do something in a way that seemed natural for women. And I don't give up because I'm unfit as a woman. I might be a man, and still be impulsive and timid and nervous, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Camors, "in taking you for my confidante in my ambitious projects, I have committed a blunder and an impertinence, which a slight contempt from you has mildly punished. But speaking seriously, Madame, I thank you with all my heart. I feared to find in you a powerful enemy, and I find in you a strong ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... versatile politician, he had written a "Brief account of George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe," which the noble editor of the "Memoires" has inserted. It describes him, "as his Diary shows, vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,' and very lethargic; but gives him credit for great wit and readiness." Cumberland, in his Memoirs, thus paints him:-"Dodington, lolling in his chair, in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring, at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out every now ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... of both these turns of fortune was transient. The symphony was duly performed, and dismissed in the papers as promising, if over-ambitious; the only tangible result was a suggestion from the popular composer, who was a member of his club, that Lancelot should collaborate with him in a comic opera, for the production of which he had facilities. The composer confessed he had a fluent gift of tune, but had no liking ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... Hume, and has in the words of Sainte-Beuve left a testimony so spirited and so delicately expressed as could have come only from a man of taste who appreciated Xenophon.[94] "The perfect composition, the nervous language," wrote Gibbon, "the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps; the calm philosophy, the careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes



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