Hello,
When I first read this, it was in a spoken version, so there was a comma in the sentence; Boys, be ambitious. They were the last words of William Smith Clark to the school boys where he was the school president in Sapporo, Japan. Then, most of the time, I found this quote without the comma, turning it into some sort of a slogan, but I sense that it has a different meaning to it; something like, boys are ambitious. Do you think my assumption is correct? Or does it have other different meaning?
Many thanks,
Cantik
I think “Boys be ambitious” would only mean “Boys are ambitious” in a rustic dialect, such as you might hear in the west of England.
I can’t explain the missing comma, in the versions you’ve seen; except that punctuation tends to be light, in slogans.
MrP
OK, thanks MrP. The thought crossed my mind too, that they loose the comma to make it a slogan.
Still, somehow, I still sense the difference in its meaning, but cannot quite make what it is.
C
Would it be that the comma-less version seems more “general”; while the comma version seems to address a particular group of boys?
Oh, never thought it that way. Maybe that’s it!
I think now I can sleep well…(*^_^*). Thanks, MrP!