William Gilmore Simms Quote

Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes.

Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside (ed. 1853)