Failure Quotes - Page 28

• Failure is doing nothing.

  Paul Hauck

  Doing Nothing

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• In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.

  Paul Lutus

  Political, Opinion, Students

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• Failure-it centers me. Too much success has me thinking, All right, what's goin' on?

  Ray Romano

  Thinking, Too Much

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• I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At our worst, we may be going through the early stages of adolescence, and everyone remembers what that is like.

  Lewis Thomas

  Sports, Running, Fashion

  Lewis Thomas (1996). “Fragile Species”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• Tree sitting is a last resort. When you see someone sitting in a tree trying to protect it, you know that every level of our society has failed.

  Julia Hill

  Tree, Trying, Sitting

  Julia Hill (2010). “Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods”, p.43, Harper Collins

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• It is a very common failing, never to be pleased with our fortune nor displeased with our character.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Character, Common, Failing

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• Failure is not an option. Failure is a prerequisite.

  David Zinczenko

  Failure Is Not An Option, Prerequisites

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• Where Example keeps pace with Authority, Power hardly fails to be obey'd.

  William Penn

  Example, Pace, Failing

  Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman, William Penn (1909). “The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”

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• Consider the core of the mind to be a wagon, with willpower to be carried about in it. Push it to a place where there can be failure, and there will be failure. Push it to a place where there can be success, and there will be success. But whether there is success or failure, if one entrusts himself to the straightness of this wagon of the core of the mind, he will attain right-mindedness in either case. Severing oneself from desire and being like a rock or tree, nothing will ever be achieved. Not departing from desire, but realizing a desireless right-mindedness - "this is the Way".

  Takuan Soho

  Rocks, Tree, Mind

  "The Unfettered Mind: Writings from a Zen Master to a Master Swordsman".

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• Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

  Samuel Johnson

  Failing, Ashamed, Please

  'Irene' (1749) prologue

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• What stands if Freedom fail? What dies of England live?

  Rudyard Kipling

  England, Failing, Dies

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• Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

  Robert Browning

  Stars, Men, Night

  'Popularity' (1855) st. 1

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• Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honour sinks where commerce long prevails.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Long, Contentment, Reign

  Oliver Goldsmith (1825). “A History of the Earth: And Animated Nature”, p.844

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• Anger is a noble infirmity; the generous failing of the just; the one degree that riseth above zeal, asserting the prerogative of virtue.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Generosity, Degrees, Noble

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1855). “Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments, Originally Treated : First and Second Series, Complete in One Volume”, p.53

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• When all else fails, fresh tactics!

  John Travolta

  Tactics, Failing, When All Else Fails

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• If I didn't care for fun and such,
  I'd probably amount to much.
  But I shall stay the way I am,
  Because I do not give a damn.

  Dorothy Parker

  Fun, Giving, Care

  "Enough Rope". Book by Dorothy Parker, 1926.

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• I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.

  James Russell Lowell

  Long, Tails, Judgment

  James Russell Lowell (1876). “The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”, p.256

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• The worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.

  James Agate

  Kind, Worst, Spoil

  James Agate (1949). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 7, Ego 8, Ego 9”

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• 'Fault' means failure to meet a standard. Whose? Mine.

  Hugh Prather

  Mean, Faults, Standards

  Hugh Prather (2009). “Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person”, p.91, Bantam

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• There is a field where all wonderful perfections of microscope and telescope fail, all exquisite niceties of weights and measures, as well as that which is behind them, the keen and driving power of the mind. No facts however indubitably detected, no effort of reason however magnificently maintained, can prove that Bach's music is beautiful.

  Edith Hamilton

  Music, Beautiful, Perfection

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• We are spirits clad in veils; Man by man was never seen; All our deep communing fails To remove the shadowy screen.

  Christopher Pearse Cranch

  Men, Veils, Spirit

  Christopher Pearse Cranch (1844). “Poems”, p.51

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• REBEL, n. A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Rebel

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.194, University of Georgia Press

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• GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Christian, Fusion, Philosopher

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.97, University of Georgia Press

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• The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song.

  Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Song, Pages, Foxes

  Algernon Charles Swinburne, Clyde Kenneth Hyder (1966). “Swinburne Replies: Notes on Poems and Reviews, Under the Microscope [and] Dedicatory Epistle”, p.64, Syracuse University Press

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• Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Pain, Adversity, Discipline

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