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

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

It is stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts prosecution.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

I have to face life with a newly found passion. I must rediscover the irresistible will to learn, to live and to love.

To play a wrong note is insignificant. To play without passion is inexcusable.

And, more importantly, reach for the stars. And realize that it is never too late—not now, not ever—for you to pursue you passion, your pursuit of perfection. And most importantly, your perseverance for making it happen.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.