Failure Quotes

Often, our relationships become an unrealized quest for what is perfect, unfettered, and free of flaws. We expect our partners, spouses, and our friends to avoid missteps and to be magical mind readers. These secret expectations play a sinister part in many of the great tragedies of our lives: failed marriages, dissipated dreams, abandoned careers, outcast family, deserted children, and discarded friendships.We readily forget what we once knew as children: our flaws are not only natural but integral to our beings. They are interwoven into our soul’s DNA and yet we continually reject the crooked, wrinkled, mushy parts of our life rather than embrace them as the very essence of our beings.I once believed that aiming for perfection would land me in the realm of excellence. This, however, may not be the trajectory of how things happen. In fact, the pursuit of perfection may be the biggest obstacle to becoming whole.It seems essential to value hard work and determination and yet recognize that the road to excellence is littered with mistakes and subsequent lessons. Imperfection and excellence are intertwined. There is joy in our pain, strength in weakness, courage in compassion, and power in forgiveness.

~ Ann Brasco

Elusive success is not the same as failure.

~ Damon Throop

When I was last in Paris I was dirt poor, hiding from the Vietnam War. One night, in an old church, I considered taking my life. I didn't know how to be so young and not belong anywhere, stuck among so many perplexing melodies.

~ Philip Schultz

To The Critics Suicide has made more than one mediocre author glorious before he's able to achieve that sobering second edition making his a suicide that waits until it's justified. But I've taken more precautions against to Suicide which is to survive in the face of failure. Success is mostly editing, that's what makes things nice. To edit is the other great Power; thus this novel started at age 30, continued at 50 and its 73, has finally achieve supremacy: a person of Good Taste as the third author and as a result the editor of all three. In the end I'll be the author of a letter to the critics a sort of open letter but for the living: suicide is not something you can edit out.

~ Macedonio Fernández

To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.

~ Jacob M. Appel

She leaves, carrying a biodegradable carrier bag that reads THE SUICIDE SHOP on one side, and on the other: HAS YOUR LIFE BEEN A FAILURE? LET’S MAKE YOUR DEATH A SUCCESS!

~ Jean Teulé

You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.

~ Joel Osteen

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

~ Maya Angelou

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

~ Samuel Beckett

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.

~ Sarah Dessen

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.

~ H.g. Wells

I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.

~ Neal Shusterman

Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.

~ Henry Ford

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

~ Henry Ford

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

~ Thomas A. Edison

I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.

~ Abraham Lincoln

I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

~ John Keats

I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.

~ Yohji Yamamoto

A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.

~ Jillian Michaels

if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want

~ Richard Yates

In every way that counted, I failed him.

~ Sarah J. Maas

Giving up is the only sure way to fail.

~ Gena Showalter

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.

~ Randy Pausch

it's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.

~ Zig Ziglar

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.

~ Roger Von Oech

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

~ Stephen Mccranie

When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.

~ Gretchen Rubin

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

~ Napoleon Hill

Whether or not there was room in her life for Tamani, Laurel knew that there was precious little room in Tamani's life for anything but Laurel. He lived to protect her, and he'd never failed her. Annoyed her, frustrated her, hurt her, maddened her - but never once failed her.

~ Aprilynne Pike

I will be known forever as the Puppy who chased a cutpurse and caught fish garbage instead. My descendants will pretend I'm not in their bloodline. No – no one will want to make descendants with me. [from Beka Cooper's journal of her first day as a new Dog i.e. cop]

~ Tamora Pierce

We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.

~ Thomas Bernhard

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

~ Jon Stewart

Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly

~ Gretchen Rubin

Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.

~ Sabaa Tahir

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

~ Zig Ziglar

I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.

~ Nicole Krauss

Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.

~ Dottie Walters

Of course, when you fall out of love, it’s rarely about just one failure or one betrayal, is it? . . . How does it happen? All those things you once loved about each other are replaced by other things that remind you of something you hate until you’re always setting each other off, and what you share is a battleground. In the end, the failure turns out to be less about sex—which surprises most men—and more about loss of respect. One morning your partner looks at you across the bed and wonders at the waywardness of her own heart—how, she asks herself, can she feel such disdain for someone she once felt such love?

~ Frederick Weisel