Quotes about Failure

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Anais Nin

The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Ashley Montagu

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

Corita Kent

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Edward de Bono

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

Elaine Maxwell

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.

Elbert Hubbard

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

Elizabeth Drew

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

My reputation grows with every failure.

George Bernard Shaw

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

Havelock Ellis

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure which is Try to please everybody.

Herbert B. Swope

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

It's a Wonderful Life

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

James Russell Lowell

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

Jessamyn West

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

John Dewey

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

Kin Hubbard

There are two kinds of failures those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

Laurence J. Peter

Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. (adapted)

Lloyd Jones

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Madame de Stael

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

May Sarton

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Oscar Wilde

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Paulo Coelho

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Pearl S. Buck

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Peter Drucker

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Rabindranath Tagore

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

Ralph Ellison

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

You've got to take the bitter with the sour.

Samuel Smiles

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Samuel Goldwyn

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Samuel Smiles

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Alva Edison

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Alva Edison

No garden is without its weeds.

Thomas Fuller

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

Wallace Stegner

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.

William M. Winans

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

William Saroyan

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Anais Nin

The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Ashley Montagu

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

Corita Kent

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Edward de Bono

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

Elaine Maxwell

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience.

Elbert Hubbard

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.

Elizabeth Drew

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

My reputation grows with every failure.

George Bernard Shaw

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

Havelock Ellis

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure which is Try to please everybody.

Herbert B. Swope

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

It's a Wonderful Life

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

James Russell Lowell

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

Jessamyn West

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.

John Dewey

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

Kin Hubbard

There are two kinds of failures those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.

Laurence J. Peter

Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. (adapted)

Lloyd Jones

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Madame de Stael

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

May Sarton

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Oscar Wilde

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Paulo Coelho

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.

Pearl S. Buck

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Peter Drucker

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Rabindranath Tagore

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.

Ralph Ellison

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy

The best way out is always through.

Robert Frost

You've got to take the bitter with the sour.

Samuel Smiles

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done.

Samuel Goldwyn

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Samuel Smiles

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Alva Edison

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Alva Edison

No garden is without its weeds.

Thomas Fuller

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

Wallace Stegner

Not doing more than the average is what keeps the average down.

William M. Winans

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

William Saroyan

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill