“Ambition displeases when it has been sated… Having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.”
L'ambition déplaît quand elle est assouvie... Monté sur le faîte, il aspire à descendre.
Auguste, act II, scene i.
Cinna (1641)
“It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
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Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995Related quotes
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Not Disraeli but La Rochefoucauld; it is Maxim 308 in his Reflections.
Misattributed
François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
On a fait une vertu de la modération pour borner l’ambition des grands hommes, et pour consoler les gens médiocres de leur peu de fortune, et de leur peu de mérite.
Maxim 308.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist
Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 824.
Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères
Le sage guérit de l'ambition par l'ambition même; il tend à de si grandes choses, qu'il ne peut se borner à ce qu'on appelle des trésors, des postes, la fortune et la faveur.
Aphorism 43
Les Caractères (1688), Du mérite personnel
“Only those with great ambitions know what great fears drive them forward.”
Peter Ackroyd book The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Page 52.
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983)
Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer
He who aspires and strives towards discipleship is in no way pledged to the same specific attitude and discipline as is the applicant for initiation, and he can, if he so choose, take as long as he desires in the treading of the Probationary Path. p. 192
Initiation, Human and Solar (1922)
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.
Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible
The Satanic Bible (1969)