A Quote by James M. Barrie

Ambition it is the last infirmity of noble minds.

James M. Barrie

Quote Topics

Ambition Infirmity Last Minds Noble

Quote Author

James M. Barrie
British - Novelist
May 9, 1860 - June 19, 1937

Ambition - it is the last infirmity of noble minds.

James M. Barrie

For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.

Honore de Balzac

I do not know whether it is the view of the Court that a judge must be thick-skinned or just thick-headed, but nothing in my experience or observation confirms the idea that he is insensitive to publicity. Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame a good public name is, as Milton said, the "last infirmity of noble mind", it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.

Robert H. Jackson

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise. That last infirmity of noble mind. To scorn delights, and live laborious days.

John Milton

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

Geoffrey Fisher

Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. But, once realise what the true object is in life ? that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' ? but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man ? and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

Lewis Carroll

(That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.

John Milton

Anger is a noble infirmity; the generous failing of the just; the one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogative of virtue.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

Worry is the last infirmity of the weak-minded.

E. C. R. Lorac

Fame is the last infirmity of the human mind.

John Milton

The desire of glory is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise.

Tacitus

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

John Milton

Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.

Frank Lloyd Wright

The cause of laziness is physiological; it is an infirmity of the constitution, and its victim is as much to be pitied as a sufferer from any other constitutional infirmity. It is even worse than many other diseases; from them the patient may recover, while this is incurable.