AMBITION,
WARNINGS AGAINST

Do nothing out of selfish ambition.

The Bible, Philippians 2:3

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Edmund Burke

Accursed ambition,

How dearly I have bought you.

John Dryden

There is no peace in ambition

Madame de Pompadour

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:

By that sin fell the angels. How can man then,

The image of his maker, hope to win by it?

William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Love and meekness, lord,

Become a churchman better than ambition.

William Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Who soars too near the sun

 with golden wings,

Melts them; to ruin his own

 fortune brings.

William Shakespeare

Ambition is an enemy to peace in the church. “Diotrephes loves to have the pre-eminence,” and that fellow has spoiled many a happy church.

C.H. Spurgeon

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices: so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

Jonathan Swift

Ambition destroys its possessor.

The Talmud

Oh, beware! Do not seek to be something! Let me be nothing, and Christ be all in all.

John Wesley