“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.” Lucy Maud Montgomery
AMBITION
slow down and REFLECT
on the MEANING and the MESSAGE of today’s quotation
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IN YOUR OWN WORDS… what is the main idea or theme that is expressed in the above quote?
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” (Albert Einstein)
PERSONALIZE….
Do you have any personal experiences or observations that relate to the meaning of this quote? If so, describe a specific example.
“There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.” (John Stuart Mill)
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ai Assistant
Interested in seeing what artificial intelligence (ai) has to say about the meaning of today’s quotation? Compare it to your own interpretation. You may be fascinated, or even possibly humbled.
ai INTERPRETATION of TODAY’S QUOTE
“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.” Lucy Maud Montgomery
“This quote from Lucy Maud Montgomery is a beautiful reminder that anything truly worthwhile usually requires a price to be paid.
What Montgomery means
She is saying that ambition alone is not enough. We may have dreams and goals, but achieving them often requires sacrifices along the way.
The “price” she describes can include:
- Work — putting in the effort even when progress is slow.
- Self-denial — giving up some pleasures, comforts, or opportunities in order to pursue something more important.
- Anxiety — wondering whether our efforts will succeed.
- Discouragement — continuing even after disappointments or setbacks.
The important point is that Montgomery doesn’t say the price makes ambition undesirable. She says that our ambitions can be well worth having, but we shouldn’t expect them to come cheaply.
A simple example
A young person who wants to become a lawyer may have to study for years, sacrifice free time, endure difficult exams, experience rejection, and sometimes wonder whether the effort is worth it.
The eventual achievement isn’t just the result of intelligence or talent. It also reflects the willingness to pay the price required to reach the goal.
The deeper message
I think the heart of the quote is:
Don’t mistake difficulty for a sign that your dream isn’t worth pursuing.
Sometimes the effort, sacrifice, anxiety, and discouragement are simply the cost of becoming the person capable of achieving what you want.
And there is another lesson here: when something is hard-earned, we often appreciate it more deeply because we know what it cost us to obtain it.“
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