Shakespeare considered it so near a vice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue.
Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless, lazy man?
He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic.

Love brings out the poetry in him.

It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet what magic it has wrought.

Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he is entirely transformed.
Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a woman thirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint.
He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes even kingdoms to gratify his master passion.

Mere ambition has impelled many a man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation, aspiration, has led him beyond the stars.