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.
- Burton, Robert

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
- Denham

Accurst ambition, how dearly I have bought you.
- Dryden, John

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
- English, Thomas

Nothing arouses ambition so much in the heart as the trumpet-clang of another's fame.
- Gracian, Baltasar

O cursed ambition, thou devouring bird, how dost thou from the field of honesty pick every grain of profit or delight, and mock the reaper's toil!
- Harvard

Ambition: The glorious frailty of the noble mind.
- Hoole

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
- Johnson, Samuel

A slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose aide may contribute to the advancement of his fortune.
- La Bruyere, Jean

Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.
- Landor, Walter S.

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.
- Lubbock, John

Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
- Machiavelli, Niccolo

Ambition is a lust that's never quenched, grows more inflamed, and madder by enjoyment.
- Otway

Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her tra
- Penrose

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.
- Quarles

No bounds his head long, vast ambition knows.
- Rowe

'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.
- Shakespeare, William

Ambition's like a circle on the water, which never ceases to enlarge itself, 'till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
- Shakespeare, William

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shad
- Shakespeare, William

Vaulting ambition which o'er leaps itself.
- Shakespeare, William

Just as there are three R's there are also three A's of business life. They are: Ability, Ambition, and Attitude. Ability establishes what a worker does and will bring him a paycheck. Ambition determines how much he does and will get him a raise. Attitude guarantees how well he does.
- Sheer, Wilbert E

Airy ambition, soaring high.
- Sheffield

Ambition is an idol, on whose wi
- Southey, Robert

Ah! curst ambition! to thy lures we o
- Teckell

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
- Wilde, Oscar

What is ambition? 'Tis a glorious cheat. Angels of light walk not so dazzlingly the sapphire walls of heaven.
- Willis

Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
- Winter, William