Quotes about success and failure

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things

Nothing succeeds like excess.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

Most people judge men only by success or by fortune.

One has regarded life carelessly, if one has failed to see the hand that—kills with leniency.

Memory may vanish so long as at the moment judgment does not fail you.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.

To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law, concealment of it will do.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles, but do not equal, our own.

CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

DESTINY, n. A tyrant’s authority for crime and fool’s excuse for failure.

EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.

INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection’s failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

KILL, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.

LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem—a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.

MAGNIFICENT, adj. Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that to which the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass, to a rabbit, or the glory of a glowworm, to a maggot.

NEWTONIAN, adj. Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.

NOBLEMAN, n. Nature’s provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one’s competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob’s-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

PERSEVERANCE, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.

PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.

REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

RENOWN, n. A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame—a little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable than the other. Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and inconsiderate hand.

SYCOPHANT, n. One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.

When great men permit themselves to be cast down by the continuance of misfortune, they show us that they were only sustained by ambition, and not by their mind; so that PLUS a great vanity, heroes are made like other men.

The aversion to lying is often a hidden ambition to render our words credible and weighty, and to attach a religious aspect to our conversation.

The largest ambition has the least appearance of ambition when it meets with an absolute impossibility in compassing its object.

The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which causes our heart to attach itself to all the qualities of the person we love in succession, sometimes giving the preference to one, sometimes to another. This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited to the same person.

We may say vices wait on us in the course of our life as the landlords with whom we successively lodge, and if we travelled the road twice over I doubt if our experience would make us avoid them.

We exaggerate the glory of some men to detract from that of others, and we should praise Prince Conde and Marshal Turenne much less if we did not want to blame them both.

Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.

Most men expose themselves in battle enough to save their honor, few wish to do so more than sufficiently, or than is necessary to make the design for which they expose themselves succeed.

We do not wish to lose life; we do wish to gain glory, and this makes brave men show more tact and address in avoiding death, than rogues show in preserving their fortunes.

Few persons on the first approach of age do not show wherein their body, or their mind, is beginning to fail.

Few things are impossible in themselves; application to make them succeed fails us more often than the means.

What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interest.

What makes us so often discontented with those who transact business for us is that they almost always abandon the interest of their friends for the interest of the business, because they wish to have the honour of succeeding in that which they have undertaken.

Moderation cannot claim the merit of opposing and overcoming Ambition: they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and sloth of the soul, Ambition its activity and heat.

Bodily temperaments have a common course and rule which imperceptibly affect our will. They advance in combination, and successively exercise a secret empire over us, so that, without our perceiving it, they become a great part of all our actions.

Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great; to console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small ability.

We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from ambition to love.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

In Botany there is a species of plants called Incompletæ; and just in the same way it can be said that there are men who are incomplete and imperfect. They are those whose desires and struggles are out of proportion to their actions and achievements.

It is only men of practical ability, knowing their powers and using them with moderation and prudence, who will be successful in worldly affairs.

In contemplation as in action, we must distinguish between what may be attained and what is unattainable. Without this, little can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him, he must take himself for more than he is, and as long as he does not carry it to an absurd length, we willingly put up with it.

When people suffer by failing to look before them, nothing is commoner than trying to look out for some possible remedy.

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age. This is why it has been said that, while the misfortune of the age caused his error, the force of his soul made him emerge from the error with glory.

The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says, when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.

If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is my master, even though he were my servant.

I went on troubling myself about general ideas until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.

It is failings that show human nature, and merits that distinguish the individual; faults and misfortunes we all have in common; virtues belong to each one separately.

If you miss the first button-hole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

The moment is a kind of public; a man must deceive it into believing that he is doing something; then it leaves us alone to go our way in secret; whereat its grandchildren cannot fail to be astonished.

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not because of one’s personal qualities, merits, and achievements, but because of one’s individual existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous beauty whom it befits.

All practical men try to bring the world under their hands; all thinkers, under their heads. How far each succeeds, they may both see for themselves.

When a new literature succeeds, it obscures the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect predominates; so that it is well, from time to time, to look back. What is original in us is best preserved and quickened if we do not lose sight of those who have gone before us.

To make many sketches issue at last in a complete work is something that not even the best artists always achieve.

Inattention to the present business, be it what it will; the doing one thing, and thinking at the same time of another, or the attempting to do two things at once, are the never-failing signs of a little, frivolous mind.

If you would be a favorite of your king, address yourself to his weaknesses. An application to his reason will seldom prove very successful.