Quotes by Subject: Success & Failure
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History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. | |||
He who waits upon fortune is never sure of dinner. | * | ||
Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in. | |||
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. | |||
I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. | |||
I don't care what you do for a living. If you love it, you are a success. | |||
Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. | * | ||
He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much. | |||
The toughest thing about being a success is that you've got to keep on being a success. | |||
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. | |||
The secret to success is to know something nobody else knows. | |||
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. | |||
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them. | |||
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. | |||
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure. | * | ||
Sometimes success is due less to ability than to zeal. | |||
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. | |||
Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. | |||
Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. | |||
Men are born to succeed, not fail. | |||
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. | |||
It's not the size of the dog in a fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. | |||
It is good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. | |||
You always pass failure on the way to success. | |||
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different. | |||
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. | |||
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse. | * | ||
The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. | |||
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. | |||
Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there. | |||
Let us realize that the privilege to work is a gift, that power to work is a blessing, that love of work is success. | |||
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. | |||
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. | |||
I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn't give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you. | |||
Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy. | |||
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. | |||
There are five ways of knowing who will win. Those who know when to fight and when not to fight are victorious. Those who discern when to use many or few troops are victorious. Those who upper and lower ranks have the same desire are victorious. Those who face the unprepared with preparation are victorious. Those whose generals are able and not constrained by their governments are victorious. These five are the ways to know who will win. | * | ||
Most business plans fail. Obviously, a success is not a realistic goal. But the people responsible for the most spectacular failures get promoted first because of their experience. | |||
When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents the danger and the other represents opportunity. | * | ||
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. | |||
Most business plans fail. Obviously, a success is not a realistic goal. But the people responsible for the most spectacular failures get promoted first because of their experience. | |||
People fail forward to success. | |||
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. | |||
One very important ingredient of success is a good, wide-awake, persistent, tireless enemy. | * | ||
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. | |||
The world belongs to the energetic. | |||
Sweat plus sacrifice equals success. | |||
Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it. | |||
I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail. | * | ||
Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. | * | ||
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed. | |||
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. | |||
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat. | |||
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. | * | ||
If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score? | |||
Some men get the world. Others get hookers and a trip to Arizona. (LA Confidential) | |||
It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money. (Citizen Kane, 1940) | |||
I'm just happy to be here and hope I can help the ball club. I'm going to give it my best shot and the good Lord willing, everything will work out. A good friend of mine used to say this is a very simple game. You throw the ball. You catch the ball. You hit the ball. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains. (Tim Robbins as Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh, Bull Durham, 1988) | |||
Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence. | * | ||
Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. | * | ||
A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm. | |||
In life, to be honest, I've failed as much as I've succeeded. But I love my wife. I love my life, and I wish you my kind of success. (screenplay, Jerry Maguie, 1996) | |||
There are only two options regarding commitment; you're either in or you're out. There's no such thing as life in-between. | * | ||
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. | |||
Clothes make the man. Nake people have no affect on society. | |||
Nice guys finish last. | |||
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. | |||
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. | |||
It is right to be content with what we have, never with what we are. | |||
The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what interests you and that you can do well, and put your whole soul into it - every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have. | |||
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. | |||
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made. | |||
When I was young I observed that nine out of every ten things I did were failures, so I did ten times more work. | |||
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. | |||
You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. | * | ||
Success is like a fart - only your own smells nice. | |||
The surest way to remain a winner is to win once, and then not play any more. | |||
Everyone has his day and some days are longer than others. | |||
Every man is the architect of his own fortune. | |||
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. | |||
There is no straight line to a dream. | |||
If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on. | |||
If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. | |||
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. | |||
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success. | |||
Murphy?s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will. | |||
When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things. | |||
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much. | |||
Nothing recedes like success. | |||
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. | |||
The men who have done big things are those who were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk failure in order to gain success. | |||
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. | |||
Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. | |||
No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life. All the opportunities in the world are waiting to be grasped by people who are in love with what they're doing. | |||
Defeat in this world is no disgrace if you fought well and fought for the right thing. | |||
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work. | |||
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. | * | ||
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. | * | ||
To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give. | |||
Nature always takes her time. Great oaks don't become great overnight. They also lose a lot of leaves, branches and bark in the process of becoming great. | |||
Where there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. | * | ||
You walk very slowly and maybe by chance you'll bump into a genius and he'll make you rich. | * | ||
The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you. | |||
If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient in them, we shall end in certainties. | |||
Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others. | * | ||
Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated. | * | ||
Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure. | * | ||
More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. | * | ||
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. | |||
Anybody can win unless there happens to be a second entry. | |||
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? | |||
There's only one thing that can guarantee our failure, and that's if we quit. | |||
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. | |||
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. | |||
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others. | |||
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity. | |||
Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork? | |||
Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. | * | ||
I’m not just involved in tennis but committed. Do you know the difference between involvement and committment? Think of ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed. | * | ||
Falling feels like flying, for a little while. | * | ||
Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants. | * | ||
*indicates a past Quote of The Week
