The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed of them.
Quotations about:
aspirations
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
When a society abandons its ideals just because most people can’t live up to them, behavior gets very ugly indeed.
As for me, I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have the money. I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it.
What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes then cease.
[Das Alter ist nicht trübe weil darin unsere Freuden, sondern weil unsere Hoffnungen aufhören.]
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
Titan, Jubilee 6, cycle 34, “Fifth” (1803) [tr. Brooks (1863)]
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Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task.
Haim Ginott (1922-1973) Israeli-American school teacher, child psychologist, psychotherapist [b. Haim Ginzburg]
Teacher and Child, Preface (1972)
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Like our shadows,
Our wishes lengthen, as our sun declines.Edward Young (1683-1765) English poet
Poem (1743-12), “Night the 5th: The Relapse,” ll. 661-662, The Complaint: Or, Night Thoughts, Vol. 1 (1744)
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Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“Can Socialists Be Happy?” Tribune (1943-12-20) [as John Freeman]
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CHARLIE MCCARTHY: Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Edgar Bergen (1903-1978) American actor, radio performer, ventriloquist
(Attributed)
Human beings are more alike than unalike. There’s no real mystique. Every human being, every Jew, Christian, back-slider, Muslim, Shintoist, Zen Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, every human being wants a nice place to live, a good place for the children to go to school, healthy children, somebody to love, the courage, the unmitigated gall, to accept love in return, some place to relax on Saturday or Sunday night, and some place to experience their God.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review, #116, Interview with George Plimpton (1990)
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A similar passage, from a speech at Ohio Dominican College (9 Dec 1993): "Humans are wonderfully different and marvelously alike. Human being are more alike than unalike. Whether in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. We want healthy children, safe streets, to be loved and have the unmitigated gall to accept love. If we are religious, we want a place to perpetuate God. If not, we want a good lecture every once in a while. And everyone wants someplace to party on Saturday nights."
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 future will be determined by the young, and there is no more essential task today, it seems to me, than to bring before them once more, in all its brightness, in all its splendor and beauty, the American dream, lest we let it fade, too concerned with the ways of earning a living or impressing our neighbors or getting ahead or finding bigger and more potent ways of destroying the world and all that is in it.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
“What Has Happened to the American Dream?” Atlantic Monthly (Apr 1961)
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I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1963-07-09), Women’s Meeting, Washington, D.C.
I have been unable to find a source for this quotation.
Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.
[Les bons mouvements ne sont rien, s’ils ne deviennent de bonnes actions.]Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) French moralist, philosopher, essayist, poet
Pensées [Thoughts], ch. 5 “Des Passions et des Affections de l’Âme [On the Soul],” ¶ 75 (1850 ed.) [tr. Calvert (1866)]
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Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.
[Die höheren Forderungen sind an sich schon schikbarer, auch unerfüllt, als niedrige, ganz erfüllte.]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Sprüche in Prosa: Maximen und Reflexionen [Proverbs in Prose: Maxims and Reflections] (1833) [tr. Saunders (1893), “Literature and Art,” #500]
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(Source (German)). Alternate translations:Aims of a higher order, even though they be not fulfilled, are in themselves more valuable than lower ones entirely fulfilled.
[tr. Rönnfeldt (1900)]Higher demands, even unfulfilled, are in themselves more worthy of esteem than lower demands completely fulfilled.
[tr. Stopp (1995), "Posthumous," #1085]
How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call “castles in the air,” built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey’s nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
“Dreams” (1886)
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The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion — it is an evil government.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 147 (1955)
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The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and dramatist [James Matthew Barrie]
The Little Minister, ch. 1 “The Love-Light” (1891)
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Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) American writer
Work: A Story of Experience ch. 12 [Christie] (1875)
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