“Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.”

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.

I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

A well begun is half ended.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.

I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.

Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine

I find ambition really attractive too – if someone’s good at something they love doing. I want someone who is driven.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.

Always surround yourself with people who are smart and ambitious

I would absolutely characterize myself as ambitious.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.