EXCELSIOR

Beecher, Henry Ward
As plants take hold, not for the sake of staying, but only that they may climb higher, so it is with men.—By every part of our nature we clasp things above us, one after another, not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but that we may go higher.

Edwards, Tryon
People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher and better than themselves.

The hunger and thirst of immortality is upon the human soul, filling it with aspirations and desires for higher and better things than the world can give. —We can never be fully satisfied but in God.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
While we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
The little done vanishes from the sight of him who looks forward to what is still to do.

Humboldt, Alexander
Beside the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfactory longing for something beyond the present—a striving toward regions yet unknown and unopened.

Jameson, Anna
What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.—The mere aspiration, by changing the frame and spirit of the mind, for the moment realizes itself.

Novalis
Happy those who here on earth have dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.

Richter, Jean Paul
Lift up thyself, look around, and see something higher and brighter than earth, earth worms, and earthly darkness.

Shakespeare, William
It is but a base, ignoble mind that mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.

Sidney, Sir Philip
Who shoots at the midday sun, though sure he shall never hit the mark, yet sure he is that he shall shoot higher than he who aims but at a bush.

Spenser, Edmund
O sacred hunger of ambitious minds!

Young, Edward
Too low they build who build beneath the  stars.