You see, my ambition was not to confound the engineering world but simply to create a beautiful piece of art.

She's not happy about the life she is living but to jump through the hoop would mean to succumb to death.

The chariot was purchased by a private collector who took it home to New York. I take pleasure in knowing that it was built to last for at least a thousand years.

Having designed and built several clocks during my career it suddenly occurred to me that when you look at the face of a clock both hands have the same center.

You see, my ambition was not to confound the engineering world but simply to create a beautiful piece of art.

If we listen human instinct actually tells us what we need, but advertising makes us want things we don't need and things we can't have.

Once upon a perfect night, unclouded and still, there came the face of a pale and beautiful lady. The tresses of her hair reached out to make the constellations, and the dewy vapours of her gown fell soft upon the land.

As I was working I noticed that the way I designed the differential gearing actually created a spare drive that sat directly below the emperor's feet, or where they would be if he were to sit in the chariot.

I think most artists find it difficult to part with their work but it's the parting that keeps us alive and keeps us working. In the case of the chariot, although it's been sold I actually still have it, just in another form.

The rabbit is significant in that the handle on the original South Pointing Chariot was carved in the form of a rabbit. Because the handle extended out front it meant that wherever the rabbit went the chariot had to follow.

If you look closely you can see that they are all interconnected, symbolic of a never-ending circle in which it is simply impossible for the dog to catch the rabbit.

Today she is the lady of death, which I believe is the best muse to have.

The dog, the rabbit and the hoop all feature in the painting, and take the place of the orrery.

In the fairy tale the painting represents the here and now. The book is actually divided into five sections, through which the key character, the muse, leads us.

The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

I started by looking at what others had done before me. You see, over the years there have been attempts by many different people to reconstruct the chariot.

The dog and the rabbit are telling us not to chase unattainable material goals.

The original item looked like a little hand cart with the figure of a man mounted on a platform between the wheels. The man's outstretched arm always pointed south.

I made every single piece myself, each individual component, so it was quite time consuming.

In practical terms the South Pointing Chariot was a simple direction finder. It could have been made to point in any direction - north, south, east or west.

Newton, of course, was the inventor of differential calculus so his place in the tale is quite special.

He was so tenacious he defied the distraction of women by refusing to have them in his presence, just as later in life he denied his blindness by calling for more and more candles.

The hoop is there to remind us not to jump through it, not to submit to someone else's control.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Don't let ambition get so far ahead that it loses sight of the job at hand.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

Ambition can be a disease, and it feeds on itself.

My craziest ambition is to take John Madden's job and salary.

There has to be this pioneer, the individual who has the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile, especially when it is new and different.

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 the prosecution.

I'm just a ballplayer with one ambition, and that is to give all I've got to help my ball club win. I've never played any other way.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

People in the U.K. cannot understand whether Blair has lost his mind or whether his ambition to be the second-most-powerful man in the world made him lose his mind.

One thing all stage mothers share is an overpowering ambition for their daughters.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Me only have one ambition, y'know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together - black, white, Chinese, everyone - that's all.

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

I should have been smart enough to stay happy. But my ambition ruled my life.

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

A young man without ambition is an old man waiting to be.

The preserve of ambition and folly in pursuit of illusion, or delusion.

My ambition in high school was to be a high school coach and teacher, and that's still what I do: teach.

Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.

Nobility of spirit has more to do with simplicity than ostentation, wisdom rather than wealth, commitment rather than ambition.

My one ambition is to play a hero.