Success and Failure

The heights by great men reached and kept

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;

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.

Success is relative:

She knows there’s no success like failure

I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.

Veni, vidi, vici.

One of the thieves was saved. (Pause) It’s a reasonable percentage.

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment; full effort is full victory.

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.

But I do guess mos peoples gonna lose.

How should I know what I’ll be, I who don’t know what I am? Be what I think? But I think of being so many things! And there are so many who think of being the same thing that we can’t all be it! Genius? At this moment A hundred thousand brains are dreaming they’re geniuses like me, And it may be that history won’t remember even one, All their imagined conquests amounting to so much dung.

Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.

A minute’s success pays the failure of years.

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

He ventured neck or nothing—heaven’s success Found, or earth’s failure.

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it; This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred’s soon hit; This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find Him.

Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night’s repose.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

The force of his own merit makes his way.

The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil’d, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

Every way makes my gain.

All’s well that ends well: still the fine’s the crown; Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.