Cocaine And Ambition Quotes

Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The general who counts only his casualties, the prisoners and the material that he has lost, the positions that he has not taken, the chances that remain to his enemy, and compares his small achievement with his vaster plan, has no sense of triumph. If he confines himself to such calculations he loses the fruit of his victory; in fact, if he is very ambitious, he will regard his victory as a reverse. For is it not a reverse to have done something which is not enough? The Savior's ambition is insatiable. For one soul He would give the whole of His blood and the whole of His heart. But precisely for that reason, when a soul is lost, even a single soul, He feels that to save it He would leave and forget all the others. His parable tells us so: "If a man hath a hundred sheep, and one of them should go astray: doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains, and go to seek that which is gone astray?"179 ~ Antonin Sertillanges

Moderation is represented as a virtue in order to restrain the ambition of great men, and to console those of a meaner condition in their lesser merit and fortune. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry. ~ Stephen Spender

Sixsmith,

Eva. Because her name is a synonym for temptation: what treads nearer to the core of man? Because her soul swims in her eyes. Because I dream of creeping through the velvet folds to her room, where I let myself in, hum her a tune so-so-so softly, she stands with her naked feet on mine, her ear to my heart, and we waltz like string puppets. After that kiss, she says, "Vous embrassez comme un poisson rouge!" and in moonlight mirrors we fall in love with our youth and beauty. Because all my life, sophisticated, idiotic women have taken it upon themselves to understand me, to cure me, but Eva knows I'm terra incognita and explores me unhurriedly, like you did. Because she's lean as a boy. Because her scent is almonds, meadow grass. Because if I smile at her ambition to be an Egyptologist, she kicks my shin under the table. Because she makes me think about something other than myself. Because even when serious she shines. Because she prefers travelogues to Sir Walter Scott, prefers Billy Mayerl to Mozart, and couldn't tell C major from a sergeant major. Because I, only I, see her smile a fraction before it reaches her face. Because Emperor Robert is not a good man - his best part is commandeered by his unperformed music - but she gives me that rarest smile, anyway. Because we listened to nightjars. Because her laughter spurts through a blowhole in the top of her head and sprays all over the morning. Because a man like me has no business with this substance "be ~ David Mitchell

This book is for you. Getting the "most possible lifetime" dollars from Social Security is likely a significant objective of yours. Saving taxes in retirement is likely a worthy ambition. Nobody wants to pay more taxes than they have to. Perhaps leaving a legacy might be another goal. Certainly coordinating your Social Security benefits with your investment and other income to combat 20-25 years of inflation is of prime importance. ~ Mark J. Orr

Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature,
the sweet, without the other side,
the bitter. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else. ~ John Steinbeck

To the lazy man the world appears bereft of all blessings; if poor, he has no friends; if rich, he has no ambition; he aims at nothing, and generally hits his mark. ~ James Ellis

Before Jerusalem
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
Passions, avarice, and ambition,
as well as their chivalrous pride
have swiftly slipped from their souls.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
In their ecstasy and their devoutness
they've forgotten their quarrels with the Greeks;
they've forgotten their hatred of the Turks.
Now they've come before Jerusalem.
And the Crusaders, so daring and invincible, so vehement in their every march and onslaught,
are fearful and nervous and are unable
to go further; they tremble like small children,
and like small children weep, all weep,
as they behold the walls of Jerusalem. ~ Constantine P. Cavafy

I am doing what I want to do - painting pictures people want and understand. I have no burning ambition to create the kind of 'art' which the confused critics praise for its 'plastic significance,' 'fluid lines,' and 'inner awareness,' or 'must be understood on three levels. ~ Arnold Friberg

For a woman ... to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her ambitions, her emotional and intellectual capacities, her social duties, her tender virtues, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration to the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity - a perversion, if you will. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. ~ William Shakespeare

Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of it, we have nothing but an empty, dull, stupid life, a wasted life.

Now, pleasure has created this pattern of social life. We take pleasure in ambition, in competition, in acquiring knowledge or power, or position, prestige, status. And that pursuit of pleasure as ambition, competition, greed, envy, status, domination, power is respectable. It is made respectable by a society which has only one concept: that you shall lead a moral life, which is a respectable life. You can be ambitious, you can be greedy, you can be violent, you can be competitive, you can be a ruthless human being, but society accepts it, because at the end of your ambition, you are either so called successful man with plenty of money, or a failure and therefore a frustrated human being. So social morality is immorality. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Race was a word that bred arrogance, danger and violence. When had incitement to race served a peaceful purpose? Race was a fuel and it needed only a match to light it. Any match - my hostility, your ambition, a third person's advantage. ~ Nayantara Sahgal

Whatever ambivalence I felt about my own career, Frankie more than made up for it with his ambition and tenacity. ~ Annette Funicello

But see how oft ambition's aims are cross'd, and chiefs contend 'til all the prize is lost! ~ Alexander Pope

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. ~ Charles Dickens

Do your best, and your best will be growing better. ~ Emma Willard

Does one grow wise in increments? By fractioning a life and then summing it? By stacking sand? An infant, in his first sleepiness, must let go of the world; a man must learn to die. What comes between are the grains of sand. Ambition. Loss. Envy. Desire. Hatred. Love. Tenderness. Joy. Shame. Loneliness. Ecstasy. Ache. Surrender. Live long enough and you will solve them all. ~ Ethan Canin

My ambition is to construct a painting so that the whole of its surface is alive, however I look at it. Each mark, and the interval between each mark must give something back on its own terms. ~ Andrew Forge

Quality and consistency of conjecture are one good measure of the ambition and the inwardness of any literary biography. The biographer is master of the archive, but also and equally master of the subjunctive mood, of un-certainty, of non-factuality. ~ Geoffrey Wall

There are disappointments in all men's lives, even those who have achieved their ambition, and there are compensations. ~ John Christopher

The whole music business in the United States is based on numbers, based on unit sales and not on quality. It's not based on beauty, it's based on hype and it's based on cocaine. It's based on giving presents of large packages of dollars to play records on the air. ~ Frank Zappa

My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing ... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about. ~ Thomas Mallon

The True Person governs by emptying the heart of desire and filling the belly with food, weakening ambitions and strengthening bones. ~ Laozi

My ambition has always been to reduce a building's support to a minimum. The more we diminish supporting structures, the more audacious and important the architecture is. That has been my life's work. ~ Oscar Niemeyer

You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you ... '
[ ... ]
Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars. ~ Alfred Bester

There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will - a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at once an object of ambition and dispute, and, in time, of division, faction, sedition, and rebellion. ~ John Adams

the smell of canals and cigarette smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafés drinking beer, saying their r's and g's in a way I'd never learn. I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before this recurrence that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again. That is probably true even if you live to be ninety. ~ John Green

Ambition characterizes and distinguishes national officeholders from other kinds of human beings. ~ Tom Cotton

You're aware there are things you once valued and were proud of in yourself, but they exist at a remove now, because they're overwhelmed by the question of whether they would be good and acceptable to him. Morality, ambition, desire, pleasure all take a backseat to, What would he think of this, and how shall I describe it to him? All you care about is maximizing his impression of you. ~ Chris Kraus

Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self. ~ Ben Jonson