Quotations about:
    failure


Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.


And remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.

Emily Kimbrough (1899-1989) American author and journalist
The Innocents from Indiana, ch. 17 (1950)
    (Source)

At the very end of the book, a note from the protagonist's mother, about the protagonist having failed the entrance examination to Bryn Mawr.
 
Added on 8-Mar-24 | Last updated 8-Mar-24
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Kimbrough, Emily

Indeed, it is a cruel truth of the history of all art and literature that most would-be poets, writers, and painters fail. The man or woman of real talent is rare, the born genius rarer still. For every book that survives the merciless judgment of time, there are nine hundred and ninety-nine rotting unread in libraries and nine thousand and ninety-nine that were never written in the first place.

michael harrington
Michael Harrington (1928-1989) American writer, political activist, political scientist [Edward Michael Harrington, Jr.]
Fragments of the Century, ch. 2 “The Death of Bohemia” (1973)
    (Source)
 
Added on 12-Feb-24 | Last updated 12-Feb-24
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Harrington, Michael

In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.
The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
“The American Promise,” speech to a Joint Session of Congress [06:27] (1965-03-15)
    (Source)
 
Added on 8-Dec-23 | Last updated 22-Dec-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Johnson, Lyndon

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Spurious)

Widely attributed to Churchill, but not found in his writings or contemporary reports of his speech. It's also attributed to Abraham Lincoln, with similar lack of provenance.

Variants:
  • "Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm."
  • "Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
  • "To succeed is to fail repeatedly, but without losing enthusiasm."
More information about this quotation:
 
Added on 14-Nov-23 | Last updated 14-Nov-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Churchill, Winston

The awareness of the ambiguity of one’s highest achievements (as well as one’s deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) American theologian and philosopher
Quoted in Time (1963-05-17)
    (Source)

Speech given at the 40th Anniversary Dinner for Time, reported in the following week's magazine.
 
Added on 10-Nov-23 | Last updated 10-Nov-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Tillich, Paul Johannes

Take then good note of it. Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!

Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847-1912) Irish author, theater manager, journalist
Dracula, ch. 10, Dr. Seward’s Diary, 7 September [Abraham Van Helsing] (1897)
    (Source)
 
Added on 31-Oct-23 | Last updated 31-Oct-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Stoker, Bram

A successful man is simply one who doesn’t make a fool of himself in the same way more than two or three times running.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 3, § 5 (1916)
    (Source)
 
Added on 28-Sep-23 | Last updated 28-Sep-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Mencken, H. L.

Every failure teaches a man something. For example, that he will probably fail again next time.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 2, § 24 (1916)
    (Source)

Variants:

EXPERIENCE. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.
A Book of Burlesques, "The Jazz Webster" (1924)

Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.
Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949)

 
Added on 17-Aug-23 | Last updated 18-Aug-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Mencken, H. L.

They never fail who die
In a great cause.

Lord Byron
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Marino Faliero, Act 2, sc. 2 [Israel Bertuccio] (1821)
    (Source)
 
Added on 8-Jun-23 | Last updated 8-Jun-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Byron, George Gordon, Lord

All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) American abolitionist, activist, journalist, suffragist
Letter to John Fraser (1868)
    (Source)
 
Added on 6-Jun-23 | Last updated 6-Jun-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Child, Lydia Maria

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Cory Doctorow (b. 1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, activist, author
“Social Quitting,” Pluralistic blog (8 Jan 2023)
    (Source)

Reposted on Twitter (8 Jan 2023).
 
Added on 14-Feb-23 | Last updated 14-Feb-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Doctorow, Cory

For narcissists, setbacks are not opportunities to learn; they’re problems caused by somebody else who got in their way or sabotaged their plans.

Jeffrey Kluger
Jeffrey Kluger (b. 1954) American journalist, author
The Narcissist Next Door, ch. 1 (2014)
    (Source)
 
Added on 3-Sep-22 | Last updated 3-Sep-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Kluger, Jeffrey

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Donn Pearce (1928-2017) American novelist, screenwriter
Cool Hand Luke (1967) [with Frank Pierson]
    (Source)

The line actually occurs twice in the movie. It's initially voiced by the Captain, the warden of the prison where Luke is sent to. While the line shows up in the final revision of the script (sc. 313) as above, Strother Martin actually speaks it in the movie without the indefinite article "a" before "failure":

     What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

The second time the line shows up -- spoken by Luke, at the end of the movie, mocking the Captain -- it is both scripted (sc. 432) and filmed with the article intact.
 
Added on 25-Jul-22 | Last updated 25-Jul-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Pearce, Donn

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) British statesman and author
(Spurious)
    (Source)

Variant: "Success is never final and failure never fatal. It’s courage that counts."

1938 Bud AdNot found in Churchill's canon. There are precursors to elements of this quotation, but the earliest version substantially like it is found in a 1938 Budweiser beer print advertisement:

Men with the spirit of youth pioneered our America ... men with vision and sturdy confidence. They found contentment in the thrill of action, knowing that success was never final and failure never fatal. It was courage that counted. Isn’t opportunity in America today greater than it was in the days of our grateful forefathers?

More discussion about this quotation:
Also attributed to Abraham Lincoln and John Wooden. Preacher Robert Schuller used Success is Never Ending, Failure is Never Final as the title of a 1990 book.
 
Added on 19-May-22 | Last updated 13-Jun-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Churchill, Winston

 
Added on 18-May-22 | Last updated 13-Jun-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Shaw, George Bernard

 
Added on 9-May-22 | Last updated 1-Jun-22
Link to this post | 1 comment
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Wilde, Oscar

Nice guys finish last.

Leo Durocher
Leo Durocher (1905-1991) American professional baseball player, manager, coach ["Leo the Lip"]
(Paraphrase)

The full quote was reported by in the column by Frank Graham, "Leo Doesn't Like Nice Guys," New York Journal-American (6 Jul 1946). When, as Brooklyn Dodgers manager, asked by a reporter if he were a nice guy:

Nice guys! Look over there. Do you know a nicer guy than Mel Ott? Or any of the other Giants? Why they’re the nicest guys in the world! And where are they? In seventh place! The nice guys over there are in seventh place. Well let them come and get me. The nice guys are all over there. In seventh place.

As the anecdote was retold (even when Graham's column was reprinted in Baseball Digest in the fall of that year), the references to "seventh place" began morphing into "last place" and "in the second division," eventually settling on the shorter version cited above. While Durocher originally denied he'd said the shorter version, he eventually lay claim to it, and used it as the title of his 1975 autobiography.

More discussion of this quotation:
 
Added on 22-Mar-22 | Last updated 22-Mar-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Durocher, Leo

Life is like fording a river, stepping from one slippery stone to another, and you must rejoice every time you don’t lose your balance, and learn to laugh at all the times you do.

Merle Shain (1935-1989) Canadian journalist and author
(Attributed)
 
Added on 18-Mar-22 | Last updated 18-Mar-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Shain, Merle

The conflict between what one is and who one is expected to be touches all of us. And sometimes, rather than reach for what one could be, we choose the comfort of the failed role, preferring to be the victim of circumstance, the person who didn’t have a chance.

Merle Shain (1935-1989) Canadian journalist and author
Hearts That We Broke Long Ago, Part 3, ch. 7 (1983)
    (Source)
 
Added on 4-Mar-22 | Last updated 22-Jul-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Shain, Merle

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1963) German poet
“The Beholder [Der Schauende]”, The Book of Images [Buch der Bilder], Second Book, Part 2 (1902) (paraphrase)

This looks to be a paraphrase from a couplet in the poem (also known as "The Man Watching"):

Sein Wachstum ist: der Teifbesiegte
von immer Größerem zu sein.

[Source]

Which translates variously as:

His growth is: to be the deeply defeated
by ever greater things.
[tr. Snow (1991)]

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
[tr. Bly]

His growth is this: to be defeated
by ever greater forces.
[tr. Barrows and Macy]

 
Added on 19-Jan-22 | Last updated 19-Jan-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Rilke, Rainer Maria

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
“My New Year Wish,” blog entry (31 Dec 2011)
    (Source)
 
Added on 28-Dec-21 | Last updated 22-Dec-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Gaiman, Neil

It is not impossibilities which fill us with deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize.

Robert Mallet (1915-2002) French novelist, poet, playwright, academician
Apostilles: ou, L’Utile et le Futile (1972)
 
Added on 7-Dec-21 | Last updated 7-Dec-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Mallet, Robert

More strategies fail because they are overripe than because they are premature.

Kenichi Ohmae
Kenichi Ohmae (b. 1943) Japanese management consultant, writer
The Mind of the Strategist (1982)
    (Source)
 
Added on 1-Dec-21 | Last updated 1-Dec-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Ohmae, Kenichi

When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people’s excuse for failure.

Robert Townsend
Robert Townsend (1920-1998) American business executive and author
Further Up the Organization (1984)
 
Added on 30-Nov-21 | Last updated 30-Nov-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Townsend, Robert

It occurs to me that there is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much. It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end a day in depression. Not easy to find the balance, for it one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

May Sarton
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
Journal of a Solitude, “February 4th” (1973)
    (Source)
 
Added on 19-Oct-21 | Last updated 19-Oct-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Sarton, May

If I had to name my disability, I would call it an unwillingness to fall. On the one hand, this is perfectly normal. I do not know anyone who likes to fall. But, on the other hand, this reluctance signals mistrust of the central truth of the Christian gospel: life springs from death, not only at the last but also in the many little deaths along the way. When everything you count on for protection has failed, the Divine Presence does not fail. The hands are still there — not promising to rescue, not promising to intervene — promising only to hold you no matter how far you fall. Ironically, those who try hardest not to fall learn this later than those who topple more easily. The ones who find their lives are the losers, while the winners come in last.

Barbara Brown Taylor (b. 1951) American minister, academic, author
Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, Part 3, ch. 17 (2006)
    (Source)
 
Added on 15-Oct-21 | Last updated 15-Oct-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Taylor, Barbara Brown

Three Failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

Minna Antrim
Minna Antrim (1861-1950) American epigrammatist, writer
At the Sign of the Golden Calf (1905)
    (Source)
 
Added on 15-Oct-21 | Last updated 15-Oct-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Antrim, Minna

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

May Sarton
May Sarton (1912-1995) Belgian-American poet, novelist, memoirist [pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton]
At Seventy: A Journal, “Wednesday, June 23rd” (1973)
    (Source)
 
Added on 5-Oct-21 | Last updated 5-Oct-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Sarton, May

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
    (Source)
 
Added on 25-Jun-21 | Last updated 25-Jun-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent. The purpose of political activity is to provide peace and prosperity; and in this every statesman failed, for whatever reason. This is a story without heroes, and perhaps even without villains.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]
The Origins of the Second World War, ch. 1 (1961)
    (Source)
 
Added on 7-Jun-21 | Last updated 7-Jun-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Taylor, A. J. P.

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess — and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.

William Goldman (1931-2018) American screenwriter, novelist
Adventures in the Screen Trade, ch. 1 (1983)
    (Source)
 
Added on 25-May-21 | Last updated 25-May-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Goldman, William

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.

Joanne "Jo" Rowling (b. 1965) British novelist [writes as J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith]
“The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination,” Commencement Address, Harvard (5 Jun 2008)
    (Source)
 
Added on 10-May-21 | Last updated 10-May-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Rowling, Jo

We can all learn from our failures. What I’ve learned is how much it hurts to fail.

Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American epigramist, aphorist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots, #3959
 
Added on 7-May-21 | Last updated 7-May-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Brilliant, Ashleigh

Failure isn’t about a lack of “natural intelligence,” whatever that is. Instead, failure is born from a messy combination of bad circumstances: high anxiety, low motivation, gaps in background knowledge. Most of all, we fail because, when the moment comes to confront our shortcomings and open ourselves up to teachers and peers, we panic and deploy our defenses instead.

Ben Orlin (b. c. 1988) American math teacher, author
“What It Feels Like to Be Bad at Math,” Slate (29 Apr 2013)
    (Source)
 
Added on 26-Apr-21 | Last updated 26-Apr-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Orlin, Ben

I don’t know whether my life has been a success or a failure But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other, and just taking things as they come along, I’ve had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.

Arthur "Harpo" Marx (1888-1964) American comedian, actor, mime, musician [b. Adolph Marx]
Harpo Speaks!, ch. 1, opening words (1961) [with Rowland Barber]
    (Source)
 
Added on 19-Mar-21 | Last updated 19-Mar-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Marx, Harpo

Where religions fail, cults appear.

Daniel Bell (1919-2011) American sociologist, writer, editor, academic
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, ch. 4 (1976)
 
Added on 15-Feb-21 | Last updated 15-Feb-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Bell, Daniel

I’ve always said that in politics, your enemies can’t hurt you, but your friends will kill you.

Ann Richards (1933-2006) American politician [Dorothy Ann Willis Richards]
“Sadder but Wiser,” interview with Paul Burka, Texas Monthly (Apr 1994)
    (Source)

Referring to appointees whose failures had caused her political problems as governor.
 
Added on 25-Jan-21 | Last updated 25-Jan-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Richards, Ann

Is there any stab as deep as wondering where and how much you failed those you love?

Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) American-British playwright, author, psychologist
The Measure of My Days (1968)
    (Source)
 
Added on 4-Jan-21 | Last updated 4-Jan-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Scott-Maxwell, Florida

Dear George:
Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.
Thanks for the wings!
Love, Clarence.

Frank Capra 1897-1991) Italian-American film director, producer, writer [b. Francesco Rosario Capra]
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) [with Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett]
    (Source)
 
Added on 18-Dec-20 | Last updated 18-Dec-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Capra, Frank

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. There is not one who has not felt the sacred fire of virtue many a time kindling up within him. He resolved to read, he resolved to give, he solved to abstain, to speak well, to think in a train, to serve God, to imitate Christ. Something he did toward realizing his purpose — but it was most unlucky time — some very unseasonable circumstances occurred and the good purpose was postponed. Who is there here who does not remember his defeats?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1829-12-07)
    (Source)
 
Added on 13-Nov-20 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. We go forward by failure. Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us and only those who are willing to fail shall taste the dangers and splendors of life. To be a good loser is to learn how to win. The real coward is he who sees no glory in failure.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) American poet, biographer
Incidentals (1904)
 
Added on 19-Oct-20 | Last updated 19-Oct-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Sandburg, Carl

[A man who] counts the pain of the state as his own glory; as if, indeed, your consulate were not the reason for that conspiracy and through which the republic was torn apart when it possessed you as its protector.”

[… qui civitatis incommodum in gloriam suam ponit. Quasi vero non illius coniurationis causa fuerit consulatus tuus et idcirco res publica disiecta eo tempore quo te custodem habebat.]

Sallust (c. 86-35 BC) Roman historian and politician [Gaius Sallustius Crispus]
Invectiva in Ciceronem [Invective Against Cicero], sec. 3 [tr. @setentiq (2020)] (Spurious)
    (Source)

In reference to the Catiline conspiracy. Most scholars believe this was not Sallust's work, but that of a 1st Century rhetorician, likely the one who penned the provoking Invective against Sallust, ostensibly by Cicero.

Alt. trans.:
  • "[He] who caused the state injury to augment his own glory. As though your consulship were not the cause of that conspiracy! That is the reason the state was torn apart at that time with you as its guardian." [tr. Novokhatko (2009)]
  • "[A] man who makes disaster to his country the means of his own glorification, was sent as a protector to this city and its citizens, and not as its executioner. As if, forsooth, your consulship was not the cause of that conspiracy, and as if the reason why the commonwealth was not rent asunder at that time was because it had you for a protector." [tr. Loeb ed. (1921), sec. 2]
 
Added on 14-Oct-20 | Last updated 14-Oct-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Sallust

CHARLIE ANDERSON: I wanna say somethin’. I’ve known since the train that we weren’t liable to find him. It was just a hair of a chance that we got Sam back. I knew that. Maybe I knew even before we left home, but somehow I just had to try! And if we don’t try, we don’t do. And if we don’t do, why are we here on this earth?

James Lee Barrett (1929-1989) American author, producer, screenwriter
Shenandoah (1965)
    (Source)
 
Added on 14-Oct-20 | Last updated 14-Oct-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Barrett, James Lee

Success covers a multitude of blunders, and the want of it hides the greatest gallantry and good conduct.

Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) British admiral
Letter to Andrew Hamond (1797)
    (Source)

Often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw.
 
Added on 5-Oct-20 | Last updated 5-Oct-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Nelson, Horatio

To find someone who will love you through success and failure is to discover how little life has to do with either.

Robert Brault (b. c. 1945) American aphorist, programmer
(Attributed)
 
Added on 1-Sep-20 | Last updated 1-Sep-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Brault, Robert

To be a writer is to accept failure as a profession — which of us is Dante or Shakespeare? — and could they return, wouldn’t they fall at once to revising, knowing they could make the work better? In our own dwarfed way, we are trying for something like perfection, knowing it is unachievable (except of course that trying and failing is a better way of living than not trying).

John Ciardi (1916-1986) American poet, writer, critic
In Vince Clemente, “‘A Man Is What He Does With His Attention’: A Conversation with John Ciardi,” Poesis, Vol. 7 #2 (1986)
    (Source)
 
Added on 26-Aug-20 | Last updated 26-Aug-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Ciardi, John

A successful career has been full of great blunders.

Charles Buxton (1823-1871) English brewer, philanthropist, writer, politician
Notes of Thought, #482 (1873)
    (Source)
 
Added on 3-Aug-20 | Last updated 3-Aug-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Buxton, Charles

Every now and then, in the course of great events, the elements of tradition and innovation ally themselves and each one’s weakness supplements the other and together they achieve the perfect debacle.

Murray Kempton (1917-1997) American journalist.
“The Genius of Mussolini,” New York Review of Books (7 Oct 1982)
    (Source)

Reprinted in Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events (1994).
 
Added on 29-Apr-20 | Last updated 29-Apr-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Kempton, Murray

It isn’t easy for an author to remain a pleasant human being: both success and failure are usually of a crippling kind.

Graham Greene (1904-1991) English novelist [Henry Graham Greene]
“The Poker-Face,” The Spectator (15 Oct 1943)
    (Source)

Reprinted in The Lost Childhood and Other Essays (1951).
 
Added on 4-Mar-20 | Last updated 4-Mar-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Greene, Graham

Nothing is more humiliating than seeing fools succeed where one has failed.

[Rien n’est humiliant comme de voir les sots réussir dans les entreprises où l’on échoue.]

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Sentimental Education, Part 1, ch. 5 (1869) [tr. Baldick (1964)/Wall (2004)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.:
  • "Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in."
  • "There is nothing so humiliating to see as blockheads succeed in undertakings in which we ourselves fail." [Ranout ed. (1922)]
  • "There is nothing so humiliating as to see blockheads succeed in undertakings in which we fail." [tr. Bouvard ed. rev. (2003)]
 
Added on 30-Jan-20 | Last updated 30-Jan-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Flaubert, Gustave

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
“What I Believe,” The Nation (16 Jul 1938)
    (Source)
 
Added on 29-Jan-20 | Last updated 29-Jan-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Forster, E. M.

Every man is in some sort a failure to himself. No one ever reaches the heights to which he aspires.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table-Talk”
    (Source)
 
Added on 9-Jun-19 | Last updated 16-Apr-21
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) Welsh author and mystic
The Hill of Dreams, ch. 5 (1907)
    (Source)
 
Added on 26-Jan-19 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Machen, Arthur

I’m working at trying to be a good Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy — it’s serious business. It’s not something where you think, Oh, I’ve got it done. I did it all day, hotdiggety. The truth is, all day long you try to do it, try to be it, and then in the evening if you’re honest and have a little courage you look at yourself and say, Hmm. I only blew it eighty-six times. Not bad.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review, #116, Interview with George Plimpton (1990)
    (Source)
 
Added on 3-Jan-19 | Last updated 3-Jan-19
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Angelou, Maya

In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, … and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

Alain de Botton (b. 1969) Swiss-British author
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, ch. 9 “Entrepreneurship” (2009)
    (Source)
 
Added on 3-Jan-19 | Last updated 3-Jan-19
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by De Botton, Alain