Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.

Cease striving. Then there will be transformation.

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.

It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.

Progress towards sanity is achieved by abandoning first the desire for omnipotence and then that for exceptional achievement.

He that is endeavouring to subdue, and root out of his mind,all those passions of pride,envy and ambition,which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy, even in this life than he that is contriving means to indulge them.

O SON OF MAN! Should prosperity befall thee, rejoice not, and should abasement come upon thee, grieve not, for both shall pass away and be no more.

Should prosperity befall thee, rejoice not, and should abasement come upon thee, grieve not, for both shall pass away and be no more.

To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.