aspire

in a sentence

She aspires to become a renowned author.

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.†  (source) Cicero

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.†  (source) M. Cartmill

But the Piazza did not aspire to elegance, service, or subtlety.†  (source) Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

The usual suspects: crazed fans, wannabe disciples, and aspiring bounty hunters.†  (source) Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, 2011

Then three or four western bad men aspired to clean out the town, were riddled like pepper-boxes for their pains, and public interest turned to other idols.  (source) Jack London, The Call of the Wild, 1903

It seems the boy aspires to take the black.†  (source) George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996

It was to teach them, that the holiest amongst us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward.†  (source) Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850

He saw no more the deep eyes, but the voice came over him as a spirit voice, and, as in a sort of judgment vision, his whole past life rose in a moment before his eyes: his mother's prayers and hymns; his own early yearnings and aspirings for good; and, between them and this hour, years of worldliness and scepticism, and what man calls respectable living.†  (source) Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852

because the people loved peace, and for this reason they loved the unaspiring prince, whilst the soldiers loved the warlike prince who was bold, cruel, and rapacious, which qualities they were quite willing he should exercise upon the people, so that they could get double pay and give vent to their own greed and cruelty.†  (source) Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

for they weened That self-same day, by fight or by surprise, To win the mount of God, and on his throne To set the Envier of his state, the proud Aspirer;†  (source) John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667

He serves you after strange devices: No earthly meat or drink the fool suffices: His spirit's ferment far aspireth; Half conscious of his frenzied, crazed unrest, The fairest stars from Heaven he requireth, From Earth the highest raptures and the best, And all the Near and Far that he desireth Fails to subdue the tumult of his breast.†  (source) Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), Faust, 1833

Aspire to a level of coolness known only as ..."Botanist Cool."†  (source) Andy Weir, The Martian, 2011