Aspiration

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See also: Hope and Wishes

An aspiration is a desire to achieve something.

Quotes

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.
- Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland (1884), Section 20. "How the Sphere encouraged me in a Vision".
Follow your dreams, not your boyfriends.
- Anderson, Gillian (19 June 2011). Joseph Galliano. ed. Dear Me: More Letters to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self.
Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration.
- Bahá'u'lláh, Proclamation of Bahá'u'lláh.
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.
- Lord Byron, Lara, Canto 18.
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.
- Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931).
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?
- William Blake, The Tyger.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Aspiration on Wikipedia
The dictionary definition of aspiration on Wiktionary