Source: The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
“To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat.”
Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) Polish politician and Prime Minister
(Late 1920s or the 1930s) Zbigniew Brzezinski in his introduction to Wacław Jędrzejewicz’s Piłsudski: A Life For Poland. Quoted from this website http://members.lycos.co.uk/jozefpilsudski/index2.html <br class="br">Attributed
“There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book I, Ch. 30. Of Cannibals
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Only he who gives up is defeated. Everyone else is victorious.”
Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra
Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About Defeat
“I am a series of small victories and large defeats.”
Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.”
Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author
Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Context: People with intelligence will use it to fashion things both true and false and will try to push through whatever they want with their clever reasoning. This is injury from intelligence. Nothing you do will have effect if you do not use truth.
In affairs like law suits or even in arguments, by losing quickly one will lose in fine fashion. It is like sumo. If one thinks only of winning, a sordid victory will be worse than a defeat. For the most part, it becomes a squalid defeat.
