A Quote by Herman Melville

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

Herman Melville

Quote Topics

Ambition Disease Greatness Mortal Sure Young

Quote Author

Herman Melville
American - Novelist
August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891

As Herman Melville wrote of that seagoing monster of a man Captain Ahab, “All mortal greatness is but disease.

Nathaniel Philbrick

We have the pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of greatness. Ours are more natural and all the more solid and sure for being humbler. Since we will not do so out of conscience, at least out of ambition let us reject ambition.

Michel de Montaigne

What is ambition but desire of greatness? And what is greatness but extent of power?

Thomas Higgons

Every young man is prone to be misled by the suggestions of his own ill-founded ambition which he mistakes for the promptings of asecret genius, and thence dreams of unrivaled greatness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Violence [in Palestina] is a symptom; the occupation is the disease - a mortal disease for everybody concerned, the occupied and the occupiers. Therefore, the first responsibility is to put an end to the occupation.

Uri Avnery

A good character today is shaped by greatness, greatness in vision, greatness in courage, greatness in insight, greatness in purpose and devotion.

A. Powell Davies

Someone like Boris Johnson is reluctant to answer questions about ambition because then the story becomes all about his ambition. Sure, he's got ambition - that's no secret at all. But also, he's very strongly motivated to try to get the kind of Brexit he believes in.

Laura Kuenssberg

I, for one, want to make sure we give every young person the chance to find the fuel for their confidence, something that will power their ambition.

Esther McVey

Buddha introduced the idea that young people should become sannyasins. Then it is something significant. When a young person goes beyond sex, when a young person goes beyond desires, when a young person goes beyond greed, ambition, the longing to be powerful, the ambition to be famous, then it is something tremendously meaningful, significant.

Rajneesh

There is no mortal whom pain and disease do not reach.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

HIV is not a gay or straight disease. It's a young people's disease, unfortunately.

Forrest Griffin

Those who have prophesied dreadful consequences as a result of the greater sexual freedom which the young assert - unwanted babies, venereal disease and so on - are usually the very same people who seek the fulfillment of their prophecies by opposing the free availability to the young of contraception and the removal of the stigma and mystification that surround venereal disease.