Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.

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.

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.

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.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds; and I very rarely change it.

Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Nothing is as harmful as expectations.

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.