"aspired" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe someone who has a strong ambition or high hopes for something. Example: She aspired to lead a successful life.
In 1995 he was elected to the regional parliament and named minister for territorial policy a big job in a part of Spain that has often aspired to independence.Mr Pujol has handled that aspiration skilfully, never demanding outright independence for Catalonia, but always insisting on special status and treatment from the central government in Madrid.
In Britain, he aspired to recreate 9/11 by detonating limousines packed with explosives in underground carparks or setting off a "dirty bomb" full of radioactive material.
And as for Kate – even if she's never aspired to be one, well of course she's a role model to young women; you can't design collections for Top Shop and imagine yourself to be anything else.
"I never even aspired to do anything like that," she says.
He aspired to emulate the "respectable project that took place in Madrid" (the Madrid train bombings) and was the ringleader of the plot, said Edmund Lawson QC, for the crown.
He aspired to work for a band but did not want to be in group.
According to Vitae's latest Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) in 2011, 26% of respondents said they aspired to a research career outside of higher education, and 16% a non-research career, compared to 44% of respondents who aspired to a career in research in higher education.
One explanation for Mitchell's continental success is that she has always aspired to the German ideal of Regietheater, which prioritises the director's interpretation over the writer's intention.
I've watched too many couples miraculously negotiate tough times – from addictions and serial adultery to bi-polar disorder – only to fall apart once the normality they aspired to becomes reality.
A hundred years ago, Macmillan was the list to which contemporary writers aspired.
The essential difference between the three was that while Wilberforce reformed the slave trade and Shaftesbury the factories, Longford only aspired to alter the penal system.
