Success and Failure

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed—I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.

Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers.

Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.

One day it happens. Success happens and it catches you by surprise. One day you are a signature, next day, you are an autograph.

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.

Success has always been a great liar.

Games in which all may win remain as yet in this world uninvented.

If a man has 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.

Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.