http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/26113613/espn-world-fame-100-2019#mashrafe-bin-mortaza
“I sold electric light bulbs to janitors, candy to drug stores, and Stoddard's Lectures from door to door. I had decided I was a total failure, when I saw an advertisement which indicated that somebody wanted an expert accountant. Not knowing anything about its I applied for the job and got it.
I am convinced that what are commonly known as "the breaks," good or bad, have fully as much to do with one's success or failure as ability. The break I got in this instance lay in the fact that my employer knew even less about the duties of an expert accountant than I did.”
How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)
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Edgar Rice Burroughs 76
American writer 1875–1950Related quotes
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
Context: And the college business: My parents wanted me to go, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t go. I got what I wanted. Those who don’t go to college have to get jobs. I agreed with all this. I told myself all this over and over. I even got a job—my job breaking au gratin dishes. But the fact that I couldn’t hold my job was worrisome. I was probably crazy. I’d been skirting the idea of craziness for a year or two; now I was closing in on it.
Molloy (1951)
Context: Anything worse than what I do, without knowing what, or why, I have never been able to conceive, and that doesn’t surprise me, for I never tried. For had I been able to conceive something worse than what I had I would have known no peace until I got it, if I know anything about myself.
Fortune magazine (August 2004).
2000s
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
“When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures.”
Boy Genius Report: "When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" https://www.bgr.in/news/when-i-think-about-my-career-my-successes-are-built-on-learning-from-failures-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella/ (29 December 2015)