Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.

It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.

Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.

While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.

A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.

God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.

Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.

For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.

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.