Quotes on Failure and Adversity
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.
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Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
Jules Renard
Success is 99% failure.
Henry Ford
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
Many of life's failures are people who didn't realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
The way to succeed is to double your error rate.
Thomas J. Watson
Defeat isn't bitter if you don't swallow it.
Unknown
Disappointment should always be taken as a stimulant, and never viewed as a discouragement.
C. B. Newcomb
I feel that the most important requirement in success is learning to overcome failure. You must learn to tolerate it, but never accept it.
Reggie Jackson
A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in the experience.
Elbert Hubbard
Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.
Florence Scovel Shinn
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.
Andre Gide
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
Mary Kay Ash
Enjoy the successes that you have, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't do well. Too many times we beat up on ourselves. Just relax and enjoy it.
Patty Sheehan
Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
Duke Ellington
When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.
James Rogers
Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.
Julie Andrews
Sometimes when you walk through a maze, you have to go back to where you started to get where you want to go.
Duane Alan Hahn
It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.
Robert Strauss
If I were to say, ''God, why me?'' about the bad things, then I should have said, ''God, why me?'' about the good things that happened in my life.
Arthur Ashe
If the truth be known, most successes are built on a multitude of failures.
Unknown
To despair is to turn your back on God.
The character 'Marilla Cuthbert' from Anne of Green Gables (#ad) miniseries
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
Truman Capote
Failure is success if we learn from it.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.
James Russell Lowell
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
African Proverb
TV is an endless cycle of producers tweaking something until it's unwatchable. That might mean changing hosts, changing the format, whatever. Shows need to evolve to stay interesting, but it's much easier to make big stupid changes then to actually fix little things that might be wrong with the original. They also always think, "Hey this is popular, let's rerun it 48 times a week and kill it!"
"Joey Bastard"
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind.
John Neal
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
We only think when we are confronted with a problem.
John Dewey
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
B. C. Forbes
It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
Heraclitus
As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.
Horace
Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.
Italian Proverb
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but rising every time we fall.
Confucius
Paralyze resistance with persistence.
Woody Hayes
The end of a dock is not an obstacle, it's an opportunity to get on a boat.
Duane Alan Hahn
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Robert F. Kennedy
The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.
Laurens Van du Post
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace
The reward of suffering is experience.
Aeschylus
Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us.
Henry Ward Beecher
No pressure, no diamonds.
Mary Case
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
M. Kathleen Casey
Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.
Charles ''Tremendous'' Jones
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
Edward Everett Hale
Don't tell other people your troubles. Half of them aren't interested, and the other half will think you deserved it.
Unknown
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving
Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.
Lou Holtz
If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, ''Here comes number seventy-one!''
Richard M. DeVos
Some people are addicted to regret. Failure by way of self-sabotage is a way of life. They love the warm feeling of regret that washes over them whenever they reminisce. It's hard to give up, but the habit can be broken.
Duane Alan Hahn
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Failure and Adversity
Disclaimer
Read these quotes and any adapted quotes at your own risk. (An adapted quote is a quote I have edited in some way to make it clearer or shorter so I can understand it better.) View this page and any external web sites at your own risk. I am not responsible for any possible spiritual, emotional, physical, financial or any other damage to you, your friends, family, ancestors, or descendants in the past, present, or future, living or dead, in this dimension or any other.