Ambitious Lady Quotes

My generation was secretive, brooding, ambitious, show-offy, and this generation is congenial. Totally. I imagine them walking around with GPS chips that notify them when a friend is in the vicinity, and their GPSes guide them to each other in clipped electronic lady voices and they sit down side by side in a coffee shop and text-message each other while checking their e-mail and hopping and skipping around Facebook to see who has posted pictures of their weekend.

I don't know how much we will rise," I say stoutly. "And I have no fear of falling. He looks at me. "You are ambitious to rise?" "We are all on fortune's wheel," I say. "Without a doubt we will rise. We may fall. But still I have no fear of it.

I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; not the soldier's which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . . If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them. If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing. (Speech was broadcast by ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965)

One of us should save her,” Benedict mused. “Nah,” Colin said, grinning. “Mother’s only had her over there with Macclesfield for ten minutes.” “Macclesfield?” Simon asked. “The earl,” Benedict replied. “Castleford’s son.” “Ten minutes?” Anthony asked. “Poor Macclesfield.” Simon shot him a curious look. “Not that Daphne is such a chore,” Anthony quickly added, “but when Mother gets it in her head to, ah . . .” “Pursue,” Benedict filled in helpfully. “— a gentleman,” Anthony continued with a nod of thanks toward his brother, “she can be, ah . . .” “Relentless,” Colin said. Anthony smiled weakly. “Yes. Exactly.” Simon looked back over toward the trio in question. Sure enough, Daphne looked miserable, Macclesfield was scanning the room, presumably looking for the nearest exit, and Lady Bridgerton’s eyes held a gleam so ambitious that Simon cringed in sympathy for the young earl. “We should save Daphne,” Anthony said. “We really should,” Benedict added. “And Macclesfield,” Anthony said. “Oh, certainly,” Benedict added. But Simon noticed that no one was leaping into action. “All talk, aren’t you?” Colin chortled. “I don’t see you marching over there to save her,” Anthony shot back. “Hell no. But I never said we should. You, on the other hand . . .” “What the devil is going on?” Simon finally asked. The three Bridgerton brothers looked at him with identical guilty expressions. “We should save Daff,” Benedict said. “We really should,” Anthony added. “What my brothers are too lily-livered to tell you,” Colin said derisively, “is that they are terrified of my mother.” “It’s true,” Anthony said with a helpless shrug. Benedict nodded. “I freely admit it.

Not me.” Ned laughed. “My future is pretty well set, and I don’t want anyone tampering with it. I’ll go into business, prosper, and marry a certain ambitious young lady named....

Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.

Oak got mixed up with the wrong people, that’s all,” Jude said wearily. Cardan smiled, a curl of black hair falling in front of his face. “He’s more like you than you want to see. Clever. Ambitious.” “If what’s happening is anyone’s fault, it’s mine,” Jude said with another sigh. “For not ordering Lady Nore’s execution when I had the chance.” “All the obscene snake songs must have been greatly distracting,” Cardan said lightly, moving on from the discussion of Oak. “Generosity of spirit is so uncharacteristic in you.

Briony’s ladies-in-waiting kept their distance, as though their mistress had some illness which might spread—and indeed she did, Briony thought, because unhappiness was ambitious.

The post-Reagan vacuum is doubly curious because Reagan was himself a vacuum (or seems so to this European outsider), an empty stage-set of a personality across which moved cut-out cartoon figures, dragon ladies or demons of the evil empire, manipulated by others far more ambitious than himself. Many people have commented on his complete lack of ideas and his blurring of fiction and reality in his stumbling recall of old movies. But Reagan's real threat is the compelling example he offers to future film actors and media manipulators with presidential ambitions, all too clearly defined ideas and every intention of producing a thousand-year movie out of them.

Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had known. Clever, rather spiteful, and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. The observation was extraordinary and peculiar. But there was no touch, no actual contact. It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum. And since the field of life is largely an artificially-lighted stage today, the stories were curiously true to modern life, to the modern psychology, that is.

I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these, but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. My

Official historians have long depicted wu zetian as a sort of chinese version of the Red Queen from The Alice and Wonderland, by focusing on her secret police and fondness by bumping off enemies. "And she slept her way to the top". An interesting angle given that her brief dynasty was one of the most prosperious periods in many respects (in terms of peace, arts, and social progress.) On the other hand, what is always pointed out (and emphasized as fact) is that she was fearsome, ambitious, and ruthless. Common (and valued)character traits in just about every emperor...but clearly not easy to digest in an empress

In fact, our ship crossed the channel and hugged around the coast of Kent and then up the Thames into London. It was a truly vile place, and only ever became worse as the centuries rolled by. It was a city for the grasping, the ambitious, and the perverse. Seekers of power and pleasure. Desperate men and women living in filth, breathing in the smoke and stench of rotting shit while dreaming of one day winning great wealth and marrying their son to an impoverished lady. A city of pimps, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, paederasts, singing girls, quacks, sorceresses, extortioners, night wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, and buffoons.

Well, now, if we’d known we were going to have such…ah…gra…that is, illustrious company, we’d have-“ “Swept off the chairs?” Lucinda suggested acidly. “Shoveled off the floor?” “Lucinda!” Elizabeth whispered desperately. “They didn’t know we were coming.” “No respectable person would dwell in such a place even for a night,” she snapped, and Elizabeth watched in mingled distress and admiration as the redoubtable woman turned around and directed her attack on their unwilling host. “The responsibility for our being here is yours, whether it was a mistake or not! I shall expect you to rout your servants from their hiding places and have them bring clean linens up to us at once. I shall also expect them to have this squalor remedied by morning! It is obvious from your behavior that you are no gentleman; however, we are ladies, and we shall expect to be treated as such.” From the corner of her eye Elizabeth had been watching Ian Thornton, who was listening to all of this, his jaw rigid, a muscle beginning to twitch dangerously in the side of his neck. Lucinda, however, was either unaware of or unconcerned with his reaction, for, as she picked up her skirts and turned toward the stairs, she turned on Jake. “You may show us to our chambers. We wish to retire.” “Retire!” cried Jake, thunderstruck. “But-but what about supper?” he sputtered. “You may bring it up to us.” Elizabeth saw the blank look on Jake’s face, and she endeavored to translate, politely, what the irate woman was saying to the startled red-haired man. “What Miss Throckmorton-Jones means is that we’re rather exhausted from our trip and not very good company, sir, and so we prefer to dine in our rooms.” “You will dine,” Ian Thornton said in an awful voice that made Elizabeth freeze, “on what you cook for yourself, madam. If you want clean linens, you’ll get them yourself from the cabinet. If you want clean rooms, clean them! Am I making myself clear?” “Perfectly!” Elizabeth began furiously, but Lucinda interrupted in a voice shaking with ire: “Are you suggesting, sirrah, that we are to do the work of servants?” Ian’s experience with the ton and with Elizabeth had given him a lively contempt for ambitious, shallow, self-indulgent young women whose single goal in life was to acquire as many gowns and jewels as possible with the least amount of effort, and he aimed his attack at Elizabeth. “I am suggesting that you look after yourself for the first time in your silly, aimless life. In return for that, I am willing to give you a roof over your head and to share our food with you until I can get you to the village. If that is too overwhelming a task for you, then my original invitation still stands: There’s the door. Use it!” Elizabeth knew the man was irrational, and it wasn’t worth riling herself to reply to him, so she turned instead to Lucinda. “Lucinda,” she said with weary resignation, “do not upset yourself by trying to make Mr. Thornton understand that his mistake has inconvenienced us, not the other way around. You will only waste your time. A gentleman of breeding would be perfectly able to understand that he should be apologizing instead of ranting and raving. However, as I told you before we came here, Mr. Thornton is no gentleman. The simple fact is that he enjoys humiliating people, and he will continue trying to humiliate us for as long as we stand here.” Elizabeth cast a look of well-bred disdain over Ian and said, “Good night, Mr. Thornton.” Turning, she softened her voice a little and said, “Good evening, Mr. Wiley.

Lady Astor. “My father fought against her when she was first elected.” That was 1919, when Michael was only six, but he remembered going around Plymouth in a coach, electioneering with his father. “The Labour candidate got about twice the vote my father got. But my father got very friendly with Lady Astor. She was a very great spokesman for Plymouth. She had a lot to be said for her.” Lord Astor, too, earned Michael’s admiration for supporting the ambitious plan to rebuild Plymouth after the war. Michael loved to quote a line from The Way We Live concerning Lord Astor’s effort to interest the House of Lords in the rebuilding plan: “Such was the power of the House of Lords that nothing was done.

He set up a store, which failed, then set up as a postmaster, but was unable to make a living at that. When a circuit court issued a judgment against him for overdue notes, the sheriff attached his personal possessions, even his horse. Then his store partner died. Forced to shoulder the hefty $1,100 burden of remaining debt, Lincoln spent fifteen years paying it off. His first lady friend, Ann Rutledge, died suddenly, of an attack of “brain fever.” His first love, Mary Owens, turned him down. Later, like many an ambitious politician, he eventually did marry well, joining with Mary Todd,

You have always embodied the worst of my father,” Lillian said. “The coldness, the ambition, the self-centeredness. Except you’re worse because you’re able to disguise it far more adeptly than he does. You’re what my father would have been if he’d been blessed with good looks and a little sophistication. I think that in winning you Daisy must somehow feel she has finally succeeded with Father.” Her brows came together as she continued. “My sister has always compelled to love unlovable creatures…the strays, the misfits. Once she loves someone, no matter how many times they betray or disappoint her, she will take them back with open arms. But you won’t appreciate that any more than Father does. You’ll take what you want, and give her very little in return. And when you inevitably hurt her, I will be the first in a line of people waiting to slaughter you. By the time I finish with you, there won’t be enough left for the others to pick over.” “So much for impartiality,” Matthew said. He respected her brutal honesty even though he was smarting from it. “May I respond with the same frankness you’ve just shown me?” “I hope you will.” “My lady, you don’t know me well enough to assess how much like your father I may or may not be. It’s no crime to be ambitious, particularly when you’ve started with nothing. And I’m not cold, I’m from Boston. Which means I’m not prone to displaying my emotions for all and sundry to see. As far as being self-centered, you have no way of knowing how much I’ve done, if anything, for other people. But I’ll be damned if I recite a list of my past good deeds in hopes of winning your approval.” He leveled a cool stare at her. “Regardless of your opinions, the marriage is going to happen, because both Daisy and I want it. So I have no reason to lie to you. I could say I don’t give a damn about Daisy, and I would still get what I want. But the fact is, I’m in love with her. I have been for a long time.” “You’ve been secretly in love with my sister for years?” Lillian asked with blistering skepticism. “How convenient.” “I didn’t define it as ‘in love.’ All I knew was that I had a persistent, all-consuming…preference for her.” “Preference?” Lillian looked momentarily outraged, and then she surprised him by laughing. “My God, you really are from Boston.” “Believe it or not,” Matthew muttered, “I wouldn’t have chosen to feel this way about Daisy. It would have been far more convenient to find someone else. The devil knows I should be given some credit for being willing to take on the Bowmans as in-laws.” “Touché.” Lillian continued to smile, leaning her chin on her hand as she stared at him.

Brennan often cited Goodbye, My Lady as one of his favorite films. Certainly it was a labor of love in the close collaboration with the director, William Wellman, better known for his action films and for The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Skeeter (Brandon DeWilde) lives with his none too ambitious uncle Jesse (Brennan) in a swamp, where they find a strange dog with a hyena-like laugh. (It is, in fact a basenji, bred in Africa). Jesse realizes the dog must have escaped from a very different environment, but Skeeter adopts the dog without thinking about the consequences should the dog’s true owner show up. Much of the picture is taken up with Skeeter training the dog to hunt better than other hounds. The deliberate and careful way Wellman paces the film makes it utterly absorbing, even as Brennan delivers one of his best understated performances. With its emphasis on rapport with nature and the land and taking responsibility for other animals, the inspirational script serves as Walter Brennan’s credo. And when the dog’s owner shows up, Skeeter has to learn how to let go of his creation, making for an ending far more real than those of most family films. Sidney Poitier has a small role as a neighbor, and though this story is set in Georgia, there is no evidence of segregation. To the contrary, Poitier’s character appears quite at home with his white neighbors, with whom he shares a bond with the land and its creatures.

Nee and I walked on in silence for a time, then she said in a guarded voice, “What think you of my cousin?” “So that is the famous Lady Tamara Chamadis! Well, she really is as pretty as I’d heard,” I said. “But…I don’t know. Somehow she embodies everything I’d thought a courtier would be.” “Fair enough.” Nee nodded. “Then I guess it’s safe for me to say--at risk of appearing a detestable gossip--watch out.” I touched the top of my hand where I could still feel the Duke of Savona’s kiss. “All right. But I don’t understand why.” “She is ambitious,” Nee said slowly. “Even when we were young she never had the time for any of lower status. I believe that if Galdran Merindar had shown any interest in sharing his power, she would have married him.” “She wants to rule the kingdom?” I asked, glancing behind us. The secluded little pool was bounded by trees and hidden from view. “She wants to reign over Court,” Nee stated. “Her interest in the multitudes of ordinary citizens extends only to the image of them bowing down to her.” I whistled. “That’s a pretty comprehensive judgment.” “Perhaps I have spoken ill,” she said contritely. “You must understand that I don’t like my cousin, having endured indifference or snubs since we were small, an heir’s condescension for a third child of a secondary branch of the family who would never inherit or amount to much.” “She seemed friendly enough just now.” “The first time she ever addressed me as cousin in public,” Nee said. “My status appears to have changed since I went away to Tlanth, affianced to a count, with the possible new king riding escort.” Her voice took on an acidic sort of humor. “And what about the Duke of Savona?” I asked, his image vivid in my mind’s eye. “In what sense?” She paused, turning to study my face. “He is another whose state of mind is impossible to guess.” I was still trying to disentangle all my observations from that brief meeting. “Is he, well, twoing with Lady Tamara?” She smiled at the term. “They both are experts at dalliance, but until last year I had thought they had more interest in each other than in anyone else,” she said carefully. “Though even that is difficult to say for certain. Interest and ambition sometimes overlap and sometimes not.” As we wound our way along the path back toward Athanarel in the deepening gloom, I saw warm golden light inside the palace windows. With a glorious flicker, glowglobes appeared along the pathway, suspended in the air like great rainbow-sheened bubbles, their light soft and benevolent. “I’m not certain what you mean by that last bit,” I said at last. “As for the first, you said ‘until last year.’ Does that mean that Lady Tamara has someone else in view?” “But of course,” Nee said blandly. “The Marquis of Shevraeth.” I laughed all the way up the steps into the Residence.

Hillary was even better. Like many people, I’d spent the 1990s observing the Clintons from afar. I’d admired Bill’s prodigious talent and intellectual firepower. If I wasn’t always comfortable with the specifics of his so-called triangulations—signing welfare reform legislation with inadequate protections for those who couldn’t find jobs, the tough-on-crime rhetoric that would contribute to an explosion in the federal prison population—I appreciated the skill with which he had steered progressive policy making and the Democratic Party back toward electability. As for the former First Lady, I found her just as impressive, and more sympathetic. Maybe it was because in Hillary’s story I saw traces of what my mother and grandmother had gone through: all of them smart, ambitious women who had chafed under the constraints of their times, having to navigate male egos and social expectations. If Hillary had become guarded, perhaps overly scripted—who could blame her, given the attacks she’d been subjected to? In the Senate, my favorable opinion of her had been largely confirmed. In all our interactions, she came across as hardworking, personable, and always impeccably prepared. She also had a good, hearty laugh that tended to lighten the mood of everyone around her.

And the thought of her garden---ballast and bread, those blooms and vines and spinney sprigs. Herbs that comforted, cured. Growing conditions had been ideal that summer. Resplendent. Delphinium spires soared their prettiest periwinkle blue; roses clambered over the arbor, luxuriant ivy slumped languidly like legions of lounging ladies. Myrtle gleamed so waxen Lavender almost saw a miniature of her face reflected back in its leaves. Ferns forested. Hollyhocks hollered their joy. Aromatic too, pears from her mother's tree. Even the moss spread ardent, brashly ambitious. The borage grew boisterous. And yarrow, always yarrow. And purple lavender, her namesake. Though some flower dictionaries ascribed a wary, ambiguous meaning to lavender, her mother long ago had asserted the contrary, that lavender equated calmness, serenity.

It wasn’t until she arrived in New York that she experienced the sense of homecoming she hadn’t known she was missing. The first time she saw the city, it was as if something exploded in her chest—it was that visceral, that immediate a falling in love. New York didn’t feel like a city to her; it felt like a country. The nation-state of New York, where the world’s restless and ambitious gathered, where the misfits and the misunderstood arrived—and the city didn’t so much welcome them as shift just a tiny bit to accommodate them, to test them, to see if they had the right stuff. And if you passed the test, then all of it was there for the taking—the joyful riot of color and smells of Jackson Heights, the eclectic streets of Greenwich Village, the elusive tranquility of Prospect Park, the benches at the Battery, where one could sit undisturbed and stare at the “lady of the harbor.” Smita remembered what Shannon had once said: “This city is like some giant social experiment conducted every single day. This place should be a fucking powder keg—but somehow, it’s not.

First ladies aren’t elected. But Betty Ford had even less of a mandate from the people than the other members of her sorority: Her husband remains the only American vice president and president who was elected to neither position. That she made the most of the situation and acted so ambitiously on projects dear to her is impressive enough. That she then went on to overcome her addictions, share them with the world, and draw upon her personal experience to help others in the same predicament - well, that’s simply heroic.

How do I walk the line between being ambitious, competitive, and powerful and being a 1980s-movie dragon career lady in shoulder-pads who everyone hates (and I hate too)? And, most important: How do I do all this and stay true to who I am?

Achieving the right balance in vision and mission statements showcases the school's commitment to setting ambitious goals while acknowledging its current resources and capabilities.

Heaven preserve me from Lady Somethings. Starchy, top-lofty creatures, the lot of them, always insisting on protocol and precedence. We want none of that in this family. The Makenhams have survived four hundred years since the first barony without the least scandal or misadventure, always perfectly respectable, because we never got ambitious or political or clever, and we kept well clear of all the stuffy Lady Somethings. You marry someone who will make you comfortable, Ferdy.

This, then, was the one thing Christina had not figured on–the deadly, far-reaching killer instinct beneath his blank, non-assuming stare. And to make matters worse, LaForche, like Christina, had intrigues and subversions of his own, He was completely normal in all ways except for one detail. He had an insidious delectable kink–an exactingly outrageous idée fixe, a driving monomaniacal purpose behind his ambitious riddling hatred. Very soon, he would turn his warped facilities against her, focusing his vast malignant energies to destroy the ridiculous self-deified woman who abused and humiliated him so. --Felipe LaForche, Villain. The Lady and the Samurai

Let me start by saying a true sensual woman is a tastemaker. What do I mean by that? I mean she sets the standard of what is pleasurable, desirable, sophisticated, refined, intoxicating, elegant, classy, sexy, healthy, delicious, saucy. Women naturally possess the power to create ANY taste. "There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted" (Sun Tzu). The sensually awakened ones are cognisant of this and use it to their advantage while those who are not awakened often see it as some form of "female oppression." They say, "You're putting women under pressure." But what about men, Lebo? Well, men are not tastemakers like women are. Why? Because, unlike women, MEN CAN'T AND ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH THEIR INNER CHARACTER TOO MUCH. For instance, a man is essentially restricted only to pants. A man can’t wear a dress, high heels, lipstick and the list goes on. This limits a man from becoming a significant contributor in the tastemaking process of life and love, except financially of course. But it doesn’t limit a woman in any way, shape or form. Women can wear dressess, even men's pants, etc.. They can put on ANYTHING actually and still be celebrated. Marilyn Monroe wore a potatoe sack. Lady Gaga wore an infamous dress made of raw beef. That's why I believe being a woman is the greatest privilege of all. Marilyn Monroe said, "One of the best things that ever happened to me is that I'm a woman." Marilyn understood that women are THE REAL TASTEMAKERS IN LIFE and relationships, not men. BEING A MAN DOESN'T REQUIRE AS MUCH AMBITION AS BEING A WOMAN. Women are relationship navigators because they are naturally more ambitious than men. That's why again, Marilyn said, "Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." Our ultimate quest as men, whether we realize it or not, is to live under a woman's spell. That makes us happy, and seem stupid at times. Sadly, most women are not sensually awakened enough to realize that. They don't know that the ultimate secret to keeping a man content with one woman lies in her sensuality.