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 FAILURE . . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] ALIBI BLAME DEFEAT ERROR EXCUSES FOOLS GIVING UP IDLENESS, IGNORANCE KNOW IT ALLS LAZINESS LOSING PROCRASTINATION QUITTING SELF-DESTRUCTION SELF-PITY STUPIDITY WEAK/WEAKNESS --- The middle way is no way at all. If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way. --John Adams (17351826) First VP and second President of the United States. Letter to Gen. Horatio Gates [1776]. They fail, and they alone, who have not striven. --Thomas Bailey Aldrich (18361907) American poet, short-story writer, and editor. "Enamoured Architect of Airy Rhyme" People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain- sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay. --W.H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden (19071973) English-born poet and man of letters. Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours. --Richard Bach (1936 ) American writer. _Illusions_ [1977] Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. --Samuel Beckett (19061989) Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet. _Worstward Ho_ [1983] How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle. --Bible "II Samuel" 1:25 Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. --Louis Boone (1941 ) American academic author. - Better to have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed, As God be thanked! I do not. --Robert Browning (18121889) English poet. _The Inn Album_, Pt iv, l. 450 [1875] The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life; Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate! --Robert Browning (18121889) English poet. 'Bishop Blougram's Apology', _Men and Women_ [1855] - Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. --attributed to Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. Then join Hand in Hand, brave Americans all, By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. --John Dickinson (17321808) American politician. "A Song for American Freedom," called The Liberty Song, first published in _The Boston Gazette_ [18 July 1768]. Be awful nice to 'em goin' up, because you're gonna meet 'em all comin' down. --Jimmy Durante [James Francis Durante] (18931980) American comedian. Quoted in Jonathan Gabay _Gabay's Copywriters' Compendium_ [2006]. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. --Thomas Alva Edison (18471931) American inventor. Quoted in Marilyn Vos Savant _Growing Up: A Classic American Childhood_, p. 122 [2002]. I don't think we have failed, we have just found another way that doesn't work. (On the ending of an attempted around- the-world balloon flight.) --Andy Elson British balloon pilot. Hamamatsu, Japan [7 March 1999]. Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. --Bob Fitzsimmons (18631917) British boxer. When asked by a newspaper reporter if he could defeat the much heavier James J. Jeffries [9 June 1899]. (Fitzsimmons lost.) And nothing to look backward to with pride, And nothing to look forward to with hope. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. "The Death of the Hired Man", in _North of Boston_ [1914] Anybody's life may be just as romantic and strange and interesting if he or she fails as if he or she succeed. All the difference is, that the last chapter is wanting in the story. --Thomas Hardy (18401928) English novelist and poet. _A Pair of Blue Eyes_, ch. 19 [1873] We don't discover what we can't achieve until we make an effort not to try. --Piet Hein (19051996) Danish poet and mathematician. "Making an Effort" A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience. --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania." _The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams_ [1923] Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. --Robert F. Kennedy (19251968) American Democratic politician. Speech to the National Union of South African students [7 June 1966]. He had delusions of adequacy. --Walter Kerr (19131996) American theater critic [husband of Jean Kerr]. Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerposts on the road to achievement. --Charles F. Kettering (18761958) American inventor. - The *probability* that we may fall in the struggle *ought not* deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it *shall not* deter me. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. "The Sub-Treasury" speech in the House of Representatives at Springfield, Illinois [26 December 1839]. My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Quoted in _1000 Brilliant Achievement Quotes_ (comp. by David W DeFord), p. 69 [2004]. Abraham Lincoln's failures: He failed as a business man - as a storekeeper. He failed as a farmer - he despised this work. He failed in his first attempt to obtain political office. When elected to the legislature he failed when he sought the office of speaker. He failed in his first attempt to go to Congress. He failed when he sought the appointment to the United States Land Office. He failed when he ran for the United States Senate. He failed when friends sought for him the nomination for the Vice-Presidency in 1856. - It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded. --Anne Morrow Lindbergh (19062001) American writer and wife of Charles Lindbergh. Because a fellow has failed once or twice, or a dozen times, you don't want to set him down as a failure till he's dead or loses his courage and that's the same thing. --George Lorimer (18691937) American editor of "The Saturday Evening Post." If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. --Moms Mabley (18971975) African-American vaudeville performer and comedian. The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true desserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy. If these villains could be put down, he holds, he would at once become rich, powerful and eminent. Nine politicians out of every ten, of whatever party, live and have their being by promising to perform this putting down. In brief, they are knaves who maintain themselves by preying on the idiotic vanities and pathetic hopes of half-wits. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. Baltimore "Evening Sun" [15 June 1936] Curses, foiled again. --"Moon Mullins' (comic strip) in _Chicago Daily Tribune_ [9 January 1930]. Supposing you have tried and failed again and again. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. --Mary Pickford [Gladys Mary Smith] (18941979) Canadian-born American motion-picture actress. Being young is greatly overestimated. . . Any failure seems so total. Later on you realize you can have another go. --Mary Quant (1934 ) English fashion designer. In "Observer" [5 May 1996]. Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you put blame on the society, then you end up turning to society for the solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsibility and tread them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the f*cking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it. --Tom Robbins (1936 ) American author. _Still Life with Woodpecker_ [1980] You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. --Beverly Sills (19292007) American opera singer. Quoted in Jacqueline Sweeney _Incredible Quotations: 230 Thought-Provoking..._, p. 54 [1997]. Trying is the first step toward failure. "The Simpsons" [7 December 1997] (Spoken by Homer Simpson) I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody. --Herbert Bayard Swope (18821958) American editor and journalist; the first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting [1917]. Speech, St. Louis, Missouri [20 December 1950]. He slandered the world in revenge for his complete lack of success in it. --Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (16941778) French writer and philosopher. _Zadig_ [1747], tr. H.I. Woolf [1949] I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures. --Earl Warren (18911974) American jurist, the 14th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [19531969]. Quoted in "Sports Illustrated" [22 July 1968]. If a man has a talent and cannot use it, he has failed. If he has a talent and uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he has a talent and learns somehow to use the whole of it, he has gloriously succeeded, and won a satisfaction and a triumph few men ever know. --Thomas Wolfe (19001938) American novelist. _The Web and the Rock_, ch. 30 [1939] ----- bathos (noun) ['bζ-thos] A dramatic fall from the exalted to the commonplace in a ludicrous manner, usually because of a common foible; banality. declivity (noun) [dκ-'kli-vκ-tee] A downward slope. feckless 1. Ineffective: unable or unwilling to do anything useful 2. Unlikely to be successful: lacking the thought or organization necessary to succeed insuperable [in-SOO-pur-uh-bul], adjective: Incapable of being passed over, surmounted, or overcome; insurmountable. recidivism (noun): A tendency to lapse into a previous condition or pattern of behavior; especially, a falling back or relapse into prior criminal habits. Ex.: Mr. Atrens's basic argument is that it's physiologically almost impossible for many people to lose weight, as evidenced by a high recidivism rate and the unflagging profitability of diet paraphernalia, from liquid concoctions to surgeons' staples. --Karen Stabiner, review of _Don't Diet_, by Dale M. Atrens, _New York Times_, [27 March 1988] end page | FACE - FAME | FAILURE | FAMILIARITY - FANTASY | FARMING - FATE | FATHERS - FEELINGS | FEMINISTS - FIFTIES (THE) | FIFTY - FLAG | FLATTERY - FOLLOWERS | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 1 (A-O) | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 2 (P-Z) | FOOLS/FOOLISH | FOOTBALL - FORESIGHT | FOREST - FRAUDS | FREE - FREEDOM OF THOUGHT | FREEDOM | FREUD - FRIENDS | FRUGAL - FUTURE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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