Failures To Success Quotes

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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
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Winston S. Churchill
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I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
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Herbert Bayard Swope
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If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?
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Jerry Seinfeld
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Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
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Truman Capote
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Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
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Salvador DalΓ­
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Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
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Winston S. Churchill
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Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
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Coco Chanel
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We learn from failure, not from success!
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Bram Stoker (Dracula)
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It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
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Theodore Roosevelt
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A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
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Dale Carnegie
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Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
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Thomas A. Edison
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Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable.
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Coco Chanel (Believing in Ourselves: The Wisdom of Women)
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Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
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Robert F. Kennedy
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Do not let arrogance go to your head and despair to your heart; do not let compliments go to your head and criticisms to your heart; do not let success go to your head and failure to your heart.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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We are all failures- at least the best of us are.
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J.M. Barrie
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Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.
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Francis Chan (Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God)
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In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
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Bill Cosby
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You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying. To the best you can do everyday.
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Jason Mraz
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Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad)
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That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.
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Roy T. Bennett
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It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
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John Steinbeck (Cannery Row (Cannery Row, #1))
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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.
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Kim Harrison (For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, #5))
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Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.
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Helen Keller
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The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.
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George Bernard Shaw
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Successful people have no fear of failure. But unsuccessful people do. Successful people have the resilience to face up to failureβ€”learn the lessons and adapt from it.
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Roy T. Bennett
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The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.
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Stephen Richards
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I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
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Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
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When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.
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Ellen DeGeneres (Seriously... I'm Kidding)
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Failure is just a few seconds away from success.
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John Flanagan (The Battle for Skandia (Ranger's Apprentice, #4))
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If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
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Steven Wright
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Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.
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Junot DΓ­az (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
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...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.
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Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance (Vintage International))
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Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
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Suzy Kassem
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Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure.
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Bill Watterson
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Failures are the stairs we climb to reach success.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,' β€” which is just another way of saying that you can't.
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Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character)
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Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.
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Ben Carson (Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story)
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How much you can learn when you fail determines how far you will go into achieving your goals.
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Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
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Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.
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Roopleen (Words to inspire the winner in YOU)
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Many times, the thought of fear itself is greater than what it is we fear.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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Failure is constructive feedback that tells you to try a different approach to accomplish what you want.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability)
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There is no failure except in no longer trying.
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Elbert Hubbard
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I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.
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Amelia Earhart
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Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm
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Winston Churchill
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At the end, someone or something always gives up. It is either you give up and quit or the obstacle or failure gives up and makes way for your success to come through.
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Idowu Koyenikan (Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams)
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The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success and failure.
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Masashi Kishimoto
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What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise
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Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
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As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don't bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.
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Joseph Campbell
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If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure
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Bob Dylan
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It is said we learn more from our failures than our successes.
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Holly Black (The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air, #2))
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You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear.
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Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
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Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.
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Og Mandino
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Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
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John Dewey
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Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all.
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Nathan W. Morris
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You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
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Beverly Sills
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So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.
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Tom Robbins
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The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.
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Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
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It's failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.
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Ellen DeGeneres (Seriously... I'm Kidding)
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If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.
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Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
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You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.
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Leonardo da Vinci
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Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.
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Dorothy Day
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Because failure isn't an option if success is just a matter of more effort.
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W. Bruce Cameron (A Dog's Purpose (A Dog's Purpose, #1))
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Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.
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Jean Vanier (Community and Growth)
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The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying
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John C. Maxwell
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Better to be the failure who nobly strived than the success who never really had to.
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Brandon Sanderson (Firstborn)
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Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. β€”WINSTON CHURCHILL
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Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
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Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.
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Vincent van Gogh (VAN GOGH)
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We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
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Rudyard Kipling
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Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. β€œFor you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
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Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
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I advise you to stop sharing your dreams with people who try to hold you back, even if they're your parents. Because, if you're the kind of person who senses there's something out there for you beyond whatever it is you're expected to do - if you want to be EXTRA-ordinary- you will not get there by hanging around a bunch of people who tell you you're not extraordinary. Instead, you will probably become as ordinary as they expect you to be.
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Kelly Cutrone (If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You)
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what is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.
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Mark Twain
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Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.
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John Keats
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Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity. [Trans. Purohit Swami]
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Anonymous (The Bhagavad Gita)
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Stop thinking, and end your problems. What difference between yes and no? What difference between success and failure? Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid? How ridiculous! Other people are excited, as though they were at a parade. I alone don't care, I alone am expressionless, like an infant before it can smile. Other people have what they need; I alone possess nothing. I alone drift about, like someone without a home. I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty. Other people are bright; I alone am dark. Other people are sharp; I alone am dull. Other people have purpose; I alone don't know. I drift like a wave on the ocean, I blow as aimless as the wind. I am different from ordinary people. I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.
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Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
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Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt -- O, marvelous error -- That there was a beehive here inside my heart And the golden bees were making white combs And sweet honey from all my failures.
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Antonio Machado
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Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
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Denis Waitley
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The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church....a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes.
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Charles R. Swindoll
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Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.
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Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain)
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You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.
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Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance)
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No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on β€œBright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia ComΔƒneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote PhilosophiΓ¦ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures β€œDavid” and β€œPieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech β€œI Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
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Pablo
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Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.
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Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - gradutaing, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expecations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life. Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.
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Jim Butcher
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Rules for Living by Olivia Joules 1. Never panic. Stop, breathe, think. 2. No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you. 3. Never change haircut or color before an important event. 4. Nothing is either as bad or good as it seems. 5. Do as you would be done by, e.g. thou shalt not kill. 6. It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap ones that you only quite like. 7. Hardly anything matters: if you get upset, ask yourself, "Does it really matter?" 8. The key to success lies in how you pick yourself up from failure. 9. Be honest and kind. 10. Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance. 11. Trust your instincts, not your overactive imagination. 12. When overwhelmed by disaster, check if it's really a disaster by doing the following: (a) think, "Oh, fuck it," (b) look on the bright side, and if that doesn't work, look on the funny side. If neither of the above works then maybe it is a disaster so turn to items 1 and 4. 13. Don't expect the world to be safe or life to be fair.
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Helen Fielding (Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination)
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I’ve learned that a storm isn’t always just bad weather, and a fire can be the start of something. I’ve found out that there are a lot more shades of gray in this world than I ever knew about. I’ve learned that sometimes, when youΒ΄re afraid but you keep on moving forward, that’s the biggest kind of courage there is. And finally, I’ve learned that life isn’t really about failure and success. It’s about being present, in the moment when big things happen, when everything changes, including yourself.
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Cynthia Hand (Hallowed (Unearthly, #2))
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The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes.
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Charles R. Swindoll
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I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.
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Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
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Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindnessβ€”even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smileβ€”reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwinedβ€”those dead, those living, those generations yet to comeβ€”that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strengthβ€”to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.
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Dean Koontz (From the Corner of His Eye)
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Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever.
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Andrew Sean Greer (Less)
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You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either. Perform every action with you heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure: for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by yoga. Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahma. They who work selfishly for results are miserable.
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Bhagavad Gita
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I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.
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William Gaddis (The Recognitions)
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I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it -- I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know -- but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.
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Virginia Satir
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Imagine there is a bank account that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to used during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course? Each of us has such a bank, it's name is time. Every morning, it credits you 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off at a lost, whatever of this you failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no over draft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against "tomorrow". You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and health. The clock is running. Make the most of today.
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Marc Levy (If Only It Were True)
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The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
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I like Texas and Texans. In Texas, everything is bigger. When Texans win, they win big. And when they lose, it's spectacular. If you really want to learn the attitude of how to handle risk, losing and failure, go to San Antonio and visit the Alamo. The Alamo is a great story of brave people who chose to fight, knowing there was no hope of success against overwhelming odds. They chose to die instead of surrendering. It's an inspiring story worthy of study; nonetheless, it's still a tragic military defeat. They got their butts kicked. A failure if you will. They lost. So how do Texans handle failure? They still shout, "Remember the Alamo!" That's why I like Texans so much. They took a great failure and turned it into a tourist destination that makes them millions. Texans don't bury their failures. They get inspired by them. They take their failures and turn them into rallying cries. Failure inspires Texans to become winners. But that formula is not just the formula for Texans. It is formula for all winners.
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Robert T. Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money - That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!)