quotations about failure
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Summing Up
A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
No matter whether failure came
A thousand different times,
For one brief moment of success,
Life rang its golden chimes.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"I Am Content"
Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
as quoted in Roy B. Zuck's The Speaker's Quote Book
There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Failure is regarded in Hollywood as practically a contagious disease; people will literally cross the road to avoid someone who is tainted with it.
BARRY NORMAN
The Film Greats
Most important thing in life ... is learning how to fall.
JEANNETTE WALLS
Half Broke Horses
Time and again we fail ... and each time we fail, we rise up again and continue, determined this time to fail better.
PAUL MCAULEY
The Quiet War
We learn from failure, not from success!
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
ROBERT BROWNING
prologue, Apollo and the Fates
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
THOMAS EDISON
attributed, Quote Unquote
There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.
JOHN KEATS
preface, Endymion
Clever or industrious men sometimes produce results which they represent to themselves as failures, while to the rest of the world they appear very much like successes.
CHARLES TOMLINSON
"On Failure", Essays Old and New
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses
Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so 'safe,' and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
In all pursuits men complain of failure when they have not attained the measure of success they proposed to themselves.
CHARLES TOMLINSON
Essays Old and New
THE ONLY REAL FAILURE IS TO FAIL OTHERS.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
We sink to rise.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Letters and Social Aims