He caters to the famous and, like Patrick, is gradually brought to relinquish ambition in favor of authenticity.
Immensely skilled in anecdote and aphorism, he describes how he readily soaked up the world around him, although his career suffered: The scale of my ambition tipped to favor the libido.
Even if her particular ambition did not find favor, some saw Ms. Hagan's story as a classic tale of making it in the big city, albeit with an unorthodox twist.
But they have the overreaching ambition of youth in their favor, and no one interested in the future of jazz can afford to ignore them.
Violet Effingham, whom Phineas pursues out of a mixture of lust and social ambition, rejects him, reluctantly, in favor of a man more reliably of her own class and tastes.
Sally is a wealthy, put-together New England private-school girl, scarred by the death of her mother just before she starts college, who puts aside her own ambitions in favor of connections to men.
An October 1984 Washington Post music review argued that with his record "Breaking Hearts," Elton John had given up on loftier ambitions in favor of simple pop hits: the album was "a sort of Elton Lite album -- tasting great even as it's less filling," the reviewer wrote.
As a farmer's wife and the mother of two teenagers, she's long since sublimated her dreams and ambitions in favor of domestic stability.
That behavior, he admits, was a reaction to his father, a product of the Depression, who favored his Civil Service stability over any kind of career ambition.
The George Kimball quote above appeared in a five-thousand-word profile on Deadspin, a Web site with occasional literary ambition and a tagline that reads "Sports news without access, favor, or discretion".
