The ambitious
man is always fearful, always under tension lest he say or do anything which
might make him displeasing in the eyes of men. He pretends humility, feigns
honesty, displays affability, shows off his kindness, is accommodating, is
compliant, honors everyone and bows to everybody, frequents courts, visits
important people, rises and embraces, claps his hands and fawns. A famous
quotation describes him well: “If there’s no dust he’ll still brush it off.” He
is prompt and eager where he knows he will please, hesitant and lukewarm where
he thinks he will not. He condemns evil and detests iniquity, but what he
praises and blames varies with the person, so long as he will be thought
competent and be deemed welcome by one and all. But see how he must keep up a
grave battle in himself, and a very hard conflict it is, with Iniquity
hammering at his soul and Ambition leading him by the hand; for what the one
suggests he do, the other will not permit. And yet Iniquity and Ambition,
mother and daughter, plot for one another: the mother lives in the open and the
daughter, kept in hiding, never resists—one claims a public and the other a
secret domain.
--Pope Innocent III, The Misery of the Human Condition
