"When ambition meets humility, we find that the river of time shapes the stones of destiny."

Ambition

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Insight & Reflection

When Samuel Johnson speaks about ambition, it invites us to pause and reflect on our own journey. How often do we consider the subtle impacts of ambition in our daily lives? This thought-provoking perspective challenges conventional wisdom and encourages a deeper understanding of ourselves.

About Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer and polymath who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The work for which he is best known is his 42,733-entry Dictionary of the English Language (1755). For this and other contributions in and to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has called him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Samuel Johnson

"Every scar carries the quiet memory of a battle faced and survived. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him."

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"Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them."

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More about Ambition

"It is a radiant truth that the spark of ambition becomes a blaze of accomplishment only through disciplined persistence — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"It is a humble truth that the distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."

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