Success and Failure Quotes

  • Care more than others think is wise
  • Risk more than others think is safe
  • Dream more than others think is practical
  • Expect more than others think is possible – Anonymous

 

  • “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

 

  • This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one . . . the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy – George Bernard Shaw

 

  • An old Chinese proverb

 

  • If your vision is for a year, plant wheat.
  • If your vision is for ten years, plant trees.
  • If your vision if for a lifetime, plant people.

 

  • Sometimes we will fail more than we succeed but if we fail to succeed due to fear of failure than failure becomes our success – Anonymous

 

  • Once you establish a goal, it will establish you -- ??

 

  • I will hurry up and get ready and someday my chance will come – Lincoln

 

  • Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do – John Wooden

 

  • Today’s preparation determines tomorrow’s achievement.

 

  • Failure is not the worst thing in the world, the very worst is not to try.

 

  • To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 

  • If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, then what you do not bring forth will destroy you – Gospel of Thomas, Gnostic Bible.

 

  • I suggest that the purpose has to be an attempt to leave the world a little better than we found it.  Forced to be free to shape our own lives, we can, by example and initiative, slowly change the part of the world around us – Charles Handy

 

  • if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings – Henry David Thoreau

 

  • What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know . . . The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do . . . to find the idea for which I can live and die – Soren Kierkegaard.

 

  • I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing/Than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. – e.e cummings

 

  • To do that [build a team], there’s just three things I’d ever have to say: If anything went wrong, I did it.  If it went semi-good, then we did it.  If anything went real good, then you did it.  That’s all it takes to get people to win for you – Paul “Bear” Bryant.

 

  • “A failure teaches you that something can’t be done—that way.” – Thomas Edison

 

  • Principle-centered people are constantly educated by their experiences. They read, they seek training, they take classes, they listen to others, they learn through both their ears and their eyes.  They are curious, always asking questions.  They continually expand their competence, their ability to do things.  They develop new skills, new interests. They discover that the more they know, the more they realize they don’t know; that as their circle of knowledge grows, so does its outside edge of ignorance.  Most of this learning and growth energy is self-initiated and feeds upon itself.  Principle-Centered Leadership—Stephen R. Covey

 

  • “Hell is full of the talented, but heaven of the energetic” – St. Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)

 

  • Make no little plans.  They have no magic to stir men’s blood. – Daniel H. Burnham

 

  • Find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. Robert Mondavi’s third secret of success.

 

  • As I rode upward, I reflected on my life. . . . I saw the pattern and the privilege of it, and the purpose of it too. It was simply this:  I was meant for a long, hard climb – Lance Armstrong, champion cyclist, from It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.

 

  • Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might gain by fearing to attempt. – Shakespeare

 

  • Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

 

  • I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level.  I am interested in the unknown, and the only path to the unknown is through breaking barriers, an often painful process. – Diane Nyad, marathon swimmer

 

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson – If a man can write a better book, or preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse trap than his neighbor . . . the world will make a beaten path to his door.” – p. 131

 

  • No work is insignificant.  If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’ Martin Luther King

 

  • Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go – T. S. Eliot

 

  • All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them – Walt Disney.

 

  • There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best – Doris Lessing, writer.

 

  • A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.  Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort – Sydney Smith, essayist

 

  • Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

  • Mother Teresa said, “Few of us can do great things but all of us can small things with great love.”

 

  • There is in this world no such force as the force of a man determined to rise – W.E.B. DuBois

 

  • Nothing can come of nothing – William Shakespeare

 

  • If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. – John D. Rockefeller

 

  • Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.  Failure is delay, not defeat.  It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. – Denis Waitley, writer and speaker.

 

  • Failure is only opportunity to more intelligently begin again. –Henry Ford

 

  • The highest reward for a man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it. – John Ruskin, critic and social theorist

 

  • We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.-Aristotle

 

  • Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement. Henry Ford

 

  • Losers visualize the penalties of failure.  Winners visualize the rewards of success. – Rob Gilber

 

  • Would you like me to give you a formula for . . . success?  It’s quite simple, really.  Double your rate of failure. . . . You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success.  But it isn’t at all. . . . You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it.   So go ahead and make mistakes.  Make all you can.  Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success.  Thomas J. Watson, businessman

 

  • Albert Einstein said, “A lot of what can be counted doesn’t count, and a lot of what counts can’t be counted.”

 

  • To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life – William James, philosopher.

 

  • To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield – Lord Alfred Tennyson, poet

 

  • Every calling is great when greatly pursued. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, physician, poet and writer.

 

  • The world isn’t interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship – Raul Armesto

 

  • Instead of seeing life as a narrow tunnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we’ve learned and create something – Liz Carpenter, writer.

 

  • The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor – Vince Lombardi, football coach.

 

  • I haven’t’ failed.  I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work – Benjamin Franklin

 

  • Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits – Thomas Edison.

 

  • What we see depends mainly on what we look for – Sir John Lubbock, archaeologist

 

  • Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail—Muriel Strode, writer.

 

  • If we are afraid of that which is high, we shall end by giving a good imitation of ourselves; and of all forms of plagiarism, self-plagiarism is the worst. – W.B.J. Martin, Theologian

 

  • Results!  Why man, I have gotten a lot of results.  I know several thousand things that won’t work. – Thomas Edison, inventor

 

  • Remember, you can’t steal second if you don’t take your foot off first. – Mike Todd, entertainer.

 

  • Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it. – Irving Berlin, songwriter.

 

  • In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.  Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. – Henry David Thoreau, writer and poet.

 

  • For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these:  It might have been. – John Greenleaf Whittier.

 

  • I know this now.  Every man gives his life to what he believes.  Every woman gives her life for what she believes.  Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing. – Joan of Arc

 

  • I know not what your destiny will be, but one thing I know; the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” – Albert Schweitzer

 

  • I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing

Than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance – ee cummings

 

  • You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically—to say “no” to things.  And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes burning inside.  The enemy of the “best” is often the “good” – Stephen Covey

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