Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air.
Paradise Lost, Bk. II. MILTON.
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air.
Paradise Lost, Bk. IX, MILTON.
Nor waste their sweetness in the desert air.
Gotham, Bk. II. C. CHURCHILL.
AMBITION.
Ambition is our idol, on whose wings
Great minds are carried only to extreme;
To be sublimely great, or to be nothing.
The Loyal Brother, Act i. Sc. 1. T. SOUTHERNE.
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.
Paradise Lost, Bk. I. MILTON.
Rather than be less
Cared not to be at all.
Paradise Lost, Bk. II. MILTON.
Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
Julius Cæsar, Act ii. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent; but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
And falls on the other.
Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 7. SHAKESPEARE.
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.
Absalom and Achitophel, Pt. I. J. DRYDEN.