Aspiration

act of aspiring or ardently desiring
See also: Hope and Wishes

An aspiration is a desire to achieve something.

Quotes

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  • I could hear the mild voice of my Companion pointing the moral of my vision, and stimulating me to aspire, and to teach others to aspire.
  • Follow your dreams, not your boyfriends.
  • Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration.
  • There is not a heart but has its moments of longing,— yearning for something better, nobler, holier than it knows now.
    • Henry Ward Beecher, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 15.
  • His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,
    And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.
  • Trapped dreams must die.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), "To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour'".
  • To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.
    • Khalil Gibran, reported in Become a Conscious Creator: A Return to Self-Empowerment (2007) by Lisa Ford, p. 44.
  • The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.
  • Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends — all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father who would call us homeward towards Himself — all these are the ground and justification for a Christian discontent; but a murmuring, questioning, fault-finding spirit has direct and sympathetic alliance with nothing but the infernal.
    • Josiah Gilbert Holland, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 15.
  • In truth, there is no religion, no worship in our prosperity and ease. So far as we are happy, we are in a state of satisfied desire; so far as we are religious, we are in a state of aspiration and unsatisfied desire.
    • James Martineau, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 15.
  • Father! forgive the heart that clings
    Thus trembling to the things of time,
    And bid my soul, on angel's wings
    Ascend into a purer clime.
    • Jane Roscoe, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 15.
  • On what wings dare he aspire?
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  •   Encyclopedic article on Aspiration on Wikipedia
  •   The dictionary definition of aspiration on Wiktionary