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Ambition Quotes
Ambition Quotes
“It is a grand thing to rise in the world. The ambition to do so is the very salt of the earth. It is the parent of all enterprise, and the cause of all improvement.”
Anthony Trollope Novelist (1815-1882)
“I don’t think about what I have done. I only think of the things I want to do, and I haven’t done.”
Martha Graham American Modern Dancer And Choreographer (1894-1991)
“Ambition beats genius 99 percent of the time.”
Jay Leno Comedian, Televison Host (born 1950)
“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
Henry David Thoreau Naturalist, Author, Philosopher (1817-1862)
“At twenty-five I should have worn a big red A on my chest; it would have stood for ambition, an ambition so brazen and burning that it would have reduced Hester Prynne’s transgression to pale pink.”
Anna Quindlen Journalist, Novelist (born 1953)
Great Legacy Poem – To One Shortly to Die by Walt Whitman
From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,
You are to die–let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you–there is no escape for you.
Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you ‘ust feel it,
I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,
I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,
I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,
I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is
eternal, you yourself will surely escape,
The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.
The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,
You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,
You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends,
I am with you,
I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.
Walt Whitman,
(1819 – 1892)
Great Legacy Poem – The Funeral by John Donne
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch,
For ’tis my outward Soul,
Viceroy to that which then to heaven being gone
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her Provinces, from dissolution.
For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
Through every part
Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
These hairs, which upward grew, and strength and art
Have from a better brain,
Can better do’t; except she meant that I
By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled when they’re condemned to die.
Whate’er she meant by ‘t, bury it with me,
For since I am
Love’s martyr, it might breed idolatry
If into others’ hands these relics came;
As ’twas humility
To afford to it all that a Soul can do,
So ’tis some bravery
That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.
