Celebrity: ...the advantage of being known by those you don't know...; the sanction of merit and the punishment of talent.
Celebrity: ...bust with legs running all over the place.
Ambition is man's liveliest instinct; it is not extinguished either when it is a submediocrity, nor even when it is decaying; it's an instinct for biological preservation of the individual... Man's aspirations are beyond his strength, in fools as well as in geniuses; at first the effort is against nature - ridiculous; for others, it's painful - tragic.
What is sadder than laurels that begin to crumble?
To conquer without danger is to triumph without glory.
Only after you have been able to establish your personality, i.e. the potencies, capacities, aspirations and ideals can you proceed to fulfillment and consecration, suffering the objective influences of the environment from which you must subjectively extract the momentum of progress, the rhythm, the wind in the sails.â
People have made an idol of luck to hide their own recklessness. For luck seldom opposes wisdom, and in life clairvoyant skill directs most actions to the mark.
It is only through the force of circumstances that we are convinced with certainty of a missed thing; only failure can edify us surely and definitively. Which is in a way equivalent to saying that, in anything, to reach certainty you have to go all the way. That is, until failure. In other words, only failure completes, gives meaning to our life, only failure crowns our work. To stop, to barricade yourself at a point other than this, may mean not exhausting your possibilities, not fully realizing yourself.
What is glory, in its broadest sense? The satisfaction which you enjoy in the depths of your soul in the consciousness of some great thing, and which deserves always to be applauded... The greater men were, the more ardent they were for it; and the more ardent they were for her, the greater they were.
Ambition: ...normal expression of self-confidence.
Before we scoff at those who fall, we should ask ourselves if we would also have a place to fall from.
Don't rest on your laurels. The glory ends the moment you forget you're a permanent debutant.
The desire to be noticed and appreciated is a healthy motive (emulation), but the desire to be recognized as the best, the strongest, the smartest of your fellows easily leads to an excessively selfish complacency that can harm both the individual as well as the community.
We must beware of impressing upon the youth the idea that success is the purpose of life, for a man who is successful usually receives from his fellows a larger share than is proportionate to the services he has been able to render. A man's value lies in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.
Sacrifices lead to great victories.
In the arenas of life there are no definitive winners.
The wisest plans not crowned with success are called fools.
Temptations and trials are struggles; if you've been defeated once, twice or more, fight again; a time will come when you will gain the victory.
In essence, celebrity is the result of human activity meaningful to society.
A loser is not a dilettante who could like and didn't like, he is not someone who met chance and was knocked down. The danger is in the inner tragedy. The loser is a man who kills himself before every act he wants to do.
The first condition of victory is sacrifice.
Every principle and every passion is silenced when ambition demands it.
Climbing a high step, however difficult and dangerous it may be, can absorb all the faculties of an active and self-conscious mind.
Celebrity is a heavy burden and it only increases the burden of those truly called to bear it...
Good reputation needs to be maintained like an eternal flame.
Man cannot wish for anything in the world that fills him with more pride than to see his enemy kneel down and at his mercy; but then his pride will be twice as great if he knows how to live up to it, showing himself merciful and contenting himself with victory.
Ambition is not to be condemned, nor is the ambitious who seeks glory by fair and honest means, for these are the very men who do great and important things.
Success is not always what distinguishes great men; for often it is the very unfortunate who die sowing, so that the mediocre posterity may have the happiness of reaping later the hard-ripening fruit.
Even the shallowest braggart would like to convince us that he owes his success to genuine merit.
The worst pain for man is to aspire to much and be unable to do anything.