“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.”

—  Chinua Achebe, book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 3 (p. 27)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and mor…" by Chinua Achebe?
Chinua Achebe photo
Chinua Achebe63
Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic 1930–2013

Related quotes

Robin Hobb photo

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

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Henry Ford photo

“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.”

Henry Ford book My Life and Work

Source: 1920s, My Life and Work (1922), pp. 19–20. Quoted in Samuel Crowther, "Henry Ford's Problem," The Magazine of Business, vol. 52 (1927), p. 182

“Bitterness is a greater failure than failure.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#440
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

“Thought is born of failure. When action satisfies there is no residue to hold the attention; to think is to confess a lack of adjustment which we must stop to consider. Only when the human organism fails to achieve an adequate response to its situation is there material for the process of thought, and the greater the failure the more searching they become.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 1

Gretchen Rubin photo

“When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

N. R. Narayana Murthy photo

“Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy (2013)

Walter Savage Landor photo

“Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one.”

Walter Savage Landor Imaginary Conversations

"Chesterfield and Chatham".
Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829)

“People think it’s a failure to live alone. But it isn’t. The failure is to live with someone because you can’t face anything else.”

M. John Harrison book Light

Source: Light (2002), Chapter 4 “Operations of the Heart” (p. 29)

John Burroughs photo

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Variant: You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying.

Peter F. Drucker photo

“A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 159

Related topics