Success and Failure

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.

Virgil Thomson, in Success and Failure

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power of the greatest obstacle.

Henry David Thoreau, in Success and Failure

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Lily Tomlin, in Success and Failure

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.

Harry S Truman, in Success and Failure

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.

Mark Twain, in Success and Failure

Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure

Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure

Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Success and Failure

The majority of the time, the thing that gets in the way of success... is your brain.

Chris Blake, in Success and Failure

Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well. Think about it.

Elias Schwartz, in Success and Failure

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Albert Schweitzer, in Success and Failure

Talkers are no good doers.

William Shakespeare, Henry VI, in Success and Failure

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

George Bernard Shaw, in Success and Failure and Work and Recreation

You see things and you say, "Why?" But I see things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, Part I, Act I (1921), in Success and Failure

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

Margaret Lee Runbeck, in Life and Death and Success and Failure

The race may not be always to the swift, or the battle to the strong, but that's sure the way to bet.

Damon Runyon, in Success and Failure

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

Carl Sandburg, in Success and Failure

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.

William Saroyan, in Success and Failure and Vice and Virtue

Nothing good ever ends.

William Saroyan, in Success and Failure