Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

What enables us to achieve our greatness contains the seeds of our destruction.

The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang.

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

Ambition aspires to descend.

I got ideas above my station, and I made mistakes.

Hubris is interesting, because you get people who are often very clever, very powerful, have achieved great things, and then something goes wrong - they just don't know when to stop.

I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

Arrogance is a weed which grows upon a dunghill; it is from the rankness of the soil that she has her height and spreadings: witness, clowns, fools, and fellows, who from nothing, are lifted up some few steps on fortune's ladder: where, seeing the glorious representment of honour above them, they are so eager to embrace it, that they strive to leap thither at once, and by over-reaching themselves in the way, they fail of the end, and fall.

The higher up, the harder the fall.

Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them.

Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit, His waxen wings did mount above his reach, And, melting, Heavens conspir'd his overthrow.

Pride went before, ambition follows him.

Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side

The higher the tower, the greater the fall thereof.

Success tempts many to their ruin.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That's not a guess, it's a guarantee. With pride, it's not a matter of 'if' we will fall, but 'when.' There are no exceptions.

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

We grow small trying to be great.

The minute I get a big head and start acting like the big man on campus, it's all downhill from there.

Nothing fails like success.

Pride and excess bring disaster for man.

Pride is the first step in people unraveling and companies unraveling and relationships unraveling.

My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.