You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil.

You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, it often is also the parent of virtue.

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise.
By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
read more

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise.
By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.

No steps backward.
[Lat., Vestigia nulla retrorsum.]

No steps backward.
[Lat., Vestigia nulla retrorsum.]

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make read more

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, read more

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
May hope to achieve it before life be read more

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
May hope to achieve it before life be done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows
A harvest of barren regrets.