Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

'I only took the regular course.' 'What was that?' inquired Alice. Carroll 'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,'the MockTurtle replied; 'and then the different branches of ArithmeticöAmbition, Distraction,Uglification, and Derision.'

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.9,'The Mock Turtle's Story'.

The people who lived behind those clean lace curtains in row after row of identical boxes were newspaper readers, and every word in at any rate my newspaper must be clear and comprehensible to them, must be interesting to them, must encourage them to break away from littleness, stimulate their ambition, help them to want to build a better land.

-Christiansen, Arthur
Headlines all my Life, ch.1.

This monstrous mixture of imbecility, extravagance and political hysteria, better known as the Bill for the future government of Irelandöthis farrago of superlative nonsense, is to be put in motion for this reason and no other: to gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Pamphlet attacking Gladstone's Home Rule Bill,  Jun.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And myambition has been growing steadily ever since.

-Dal|¤  , Salvador
  The Secret Life of Salvador Dal|¤,  prologue.

What argufies pride and ambition? Soon or late death will take us in tow: Each bullet has got its commission, And when our time's come we must go.

-Diaz, Porfirio
'Each Bullet Has Got Its Commission'. First published1803.

And all my endeavours are unlucky explorers come back, abandoning the expedition; the specimens, the lilies of ambition still spring in their climate, still unpicked; but time, time is all I lacked to find them, as the great collectors before me.

-Douglas, Gavin
  'On a Return from Egypt,1943^44' (published1946).

What cannot praise effect in mighty minds, When flattery soothes, and when ambition blinds!

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.303^4.

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

-Gray,Thomas
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.29^36.

A writer's ambition should be†to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years'time and for one reader in a hundred years.

-Koestler, Arthur
  In the NewYork Times Book Review,1  Apr.

Iwanted toattempt something of ambition and size even if that meant I might be accused of straying too close to ambition's ugly twin, pretentiousness.

-Kushner,Tony
  Of his  Angels in  America, written in two parts. In the New York Times, 21 Nov.

Shenever wantedtobe sexy, but inthose daysambitions were different, and she was the most ambitious of them all.

-Lagerfeld, Karl
  Of  Wallis Simpson, Duchess of  Windsor. In the NewYork Times,19 Sep.

My ambition is that men should have a voluptuous feeling when they look at the portraits I paint of women. Love interests me more than painting. My pictures are the love stories I tell to myself and which I want to tell others.

-Laurencin, Marie
Quoted in Gabrielle Buffet 'Marie Laurencin', in The Arts 3 (1903).

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present: fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.

-Lewis, C(live) S(taples)
  The Screwtape Letters, no.15.

It is ambition enough to be employed as an under- labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge. 514

-Locke,John
  Essay Concerning Human Understanding,'Epistle to the Reader'.

The lower still I fall, only supreme In misery; such joy ambition finds.

-Milton,John
  Satan. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.91^2.

Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifeöthe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

-Norris, Frank Benjamin Franklin
  Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

   During my tenure of power, myearnest wish has beento impress the people of this country with a belief that the legislature was animated bya sincere desire to frame its legislation upon the principles of equity and justice† Deprive me of power tomorrow, but you can never deprive me of the consciousness that I have exercised the powers committed to me from no corrupt or interested motives, from no desire to gratifyambition, or to attain any personal object.

-Peel, Sir Robert
  On the repeal of the Corn Laws, House of Commons, 15 May.

Amid the wreck and the misery of nations it is our just exaltation that we have continued superior to all that ambition or despotism could effect; and our still higher exaltation ought to be that we provide not only for our own safety but hold out a prospect for nations now bending under the yoke of tyranny of what the exertions of a free people can effect.

-Pitt,William known as  theYounger
  Speech to the House of Commons, 25 Apr.

   Awake, my St.John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since Life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle1, l.1^6.