To Be Famous We Must Be Ambitious
Young ladies and gentlemen, an appeal to you.
The desire to be thought well of, to desire to be great in goodness, is in itself a noble quality of the mind, and is often termed ambition. If it is our ambition to gain distinction, we will rob the weak and flatter the strong, and become the fawning slave of those who are able to foist us above our betters and deck us with the titles and honors of the great without any regard to our own merit of respectability. But if we are ambitious to do good, without any regard for the fame we may win or the praise we may command, our course will be honorable and our acts and deeds most worthy and good. When we have done with the world the prints of our worthy ambition we will still remain in the minds of those who come after us to enjoy and reap the benefits, for which they will revive our memory and retain our names in the lists of those whose labors have aided in enlightening the world and exalting the general interest of mankind.
Much of the advancement of the world can be traced of the efforts of those who were moved by ambition to become famous. Ambition is like fire. It is an excellent servant, but a poor master. As long as it is held strictly to integrity and honor, and to conform to the requirements of justice, there is but little danger of a man’s having too much of it.
The happiness promised by ambition dissolves in sorrow just as we are about to grasp it. It makes the same mistake concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means of happiness, but she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Notes
Ambition is an excessive quality and, as such, is apt to lead us to the most extraordinary results. But if our ambition leads us to excel or seek to excel in that which is good, the currents it may induce us to support will be of great good. But if it is stimulated by pride, envy or vanity, we will confine our support principally to the counter currents of life, and thus leave behind us misery and destruction.