Quotes about failure

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“Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.”

“Failure: the renewable resource.”

“I don't believe in failure. It's not failure if you enjoy the process.”

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”

“Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.”

“Failure is not having the courage to try, nothing more an nothing less.”

“No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.”

“I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly”

“Intent is guilt. Failure to successfully carry out the intent does not absolve the guilt.”

“I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.”

“Failure is success in progress”

“When you fear to fail, you fear something that has not happened yet. You predict your own failure, and by inaction, lock yourself into it.”

“After all, there is nothing but failure.”

“What other people label or might try to call failure, I have learned is just God's way of pointing you in a new direction.”

“A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.”

“What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?”

“Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared. […]It's slow. It rots out your guts.”

“The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success and failure.”

“Remember this your lifetime through:
Tomorrow there will be more to do.
And failure waits for all who stay
With some success made yesterday.
Tomorrow you must try once more,
And even harder than before.”

“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”

“When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them.”

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.”

“Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.”

“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.”

“He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he could learn from his mistakes.”

“It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.”

“Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.”

“There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure - it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.”

“Translation is the art of failure.”

“The line between failure and success is so fine… that we are often on the line and do not know it.”

“If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.”

“By taking risks. By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love, as long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.”

“I was stained by failure.”

“I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.”

“For some unknown reason, success usually occurs in private, while failure occurs in
full view.”

“You must embrace failure”

“Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.”

“His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.”

“… all cynicism masks a failure to cope.”

“The only real failure is the failure to try, and the measure of success is how we cope with disappointment.”

“Defeat ends when we launch into another battle. Failure has no end: it is a lifetime choice.”

“But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring. Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.”

“Failure is acceptable. but not trying is a whole different ball park.”

“I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.”

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”

“A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”

“I’m afraid of everything. Fear of being alone, fear of being hurt, fear of being made a fool of, fear of failure… Still, I think all my fears bleed from one big one…”

“If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.”

“Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough.”

“Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.”

“Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.”

“The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.”

“If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it's because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”

“We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

“The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.”

“If in 100 years I am only known as the man who invented Sherlock Holmes then I will have considered my life a failure.”

“There is no such things as darkness, only a failure to see.”

“success requires no apologies, failure permits no alibis.” If”

“That's why I want you there, he said. You're unpredictable, and that can be the difference between success and failure. Most people make decisions in anger, fear, love, or obligation. You make decisions to irritate people.”

“In my dream, the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination

and then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.”

“No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.”

“Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.”

“When we are confronted by failure and mistakes, we can leave them behind and go on with our lives.”

“Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence.”

“The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves they don't give a damn.”

“Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way”

“Failure is a state of mind. It's like one of those sand traps an ant lion digs. You keep sliding back. Takes one hell of a jump to get out of it.”

“In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God.”

“Do not dwell on past failures or it will ruin your future.”

“The secret of success is to triple your rate of failure.”

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

“Vice is basically the love of failure.”

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.”

“Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.”

“It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life.”

“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.”

“I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.”

“If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.”

“I truly believed that the cost of success for us shouldn't be the cost of failure for a good friend.”

“I want the same one, the way she always is, without failures, without fights, without bad memories.”

“You learn as much from failure as from success, Dad always says. Though no one admires you for it.”

“What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure… To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.”

“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.”

“The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”

“There are, he assures her, no such things as curses. There is luck, maybe, bad or good. A slight inclination of each day towards success or failure. But no curses.”

“I will tell you that there have been no failures in my life. I don't want to sound like some metaphysical queen, but there have been no failures. There have been some tremendous lessons.”

“And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.”

“It wasn't only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

“Don't be discouraged - every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one.”

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”

“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”

“My own heart would have concealed it from me, for failure to love is almost like murder and I would have been incapable of inflicting such a blow on anyone.”

“In these facts we discover the cause of the popular discontent and outbreaks which have so frequently threatened the stability of the British throne and the peace of the English people. As early as 1770 Lord Chatham said, 'By the end of this century, either the Parliament must be reformed from within, or it will be reformed with a vengeance from without.' The disastrous failure of Republicanism in France delayed the fulfillment of his prophecy; but when, in 1832, the people were on the verge of revolt, the government was reluctantly compelled to pass the celebrated Reform Bill, which has taken its place in English history beside Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. It equalized the basis of representation, and extended the suffrage to the middle class; and though the property qualification practically excluded the workingman, a great step upward had been taken, a concession had been made which must be followed by others. The struggle is again going on. Its omens are not doubtful. The great storm through which American liberty has just passed gave a temporary triumph to the enemies of popular right in England. But our recent glorious triumph is the signal of disaster to tyranny, and victory for the people. The liberal party in England are jubilant, and will never rest until the ballot, that 'silent vindicator of liberty', is in the hand of the workingman, and the temple of English liberty rests on the broad foundation of popular suffrage. Let us learn from this, that suffrage and safety, like liberty and union, are one and inseparable.”

“Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. But I told the grand jury today and I say to you now that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence or to take any other unlawful action.”

“Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.”

“The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.”