To round off this week’s theme of exploring failure I thought I’d share a list of 10 inspirational quotes to help you dust yourself off when the inevitable happens. I hope these are going to be of use to you. I personally always find inspiration in a good quote.
Failure is an event, never a person. – William D. Brown
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. - Beverly Sills
Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid. – John Keats (1795 – 1821)
If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down. – Mary Pickford (1893 – 1979)
You always pass failure on the way to success. – Mickey Rooney
We all have a few failures under our belt. It’s what makes us ready for the successes. - Randy K. Milholland, Midnight Macabre, 10-18-05
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
A minute’s success pays the failure of years. – Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas A. Edison (1847 – 1931)
Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. – William Saroyan (1908 – 1981)
Of course these aren’t the be all and end all of quotes on failure. Do you have a favourite that I haven’t mentioned? How have you found the inspiration to overcome your own failures? Please comment and let us know.
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Hi Marc – I really enjoyed these quotes, and I liked that one of them was from Randy Milholland.
I think the only way to deal with failure is really to embrace it, and remove the negative connotation from the word. Every failure is a learning experience. I’m a big believer that you need to fail a lot before you succeed, and that success lasts quite a bit longer than failure. It’s worth failing a lot in order to succeed a little.
Adam Di Stefano – 52 Short Stories’s last blog post..Writing While Traveling
I love the quotes. I always try to learn from my failures. Try, try, and try again.
LisaNewton’s last blog post..Chris Brogan, the So Cal Action Sports Network, and the evening that almost was
I remember being told “There is no failure, there is only Feedback” I like that, it takes the sting out of something that doesn’t work and retains the lesson within.
Melinda’s last blog post..Business Practices that Make you Look Bad
Great quotes, Marc! With my up and down life, I’ve got a whole section on ‘failure’ in my quotebooks and a category called ’success and failure’ in my archives too! My best writing has often resulted from what I thought at the time were painful ‘failures’. Failure and success are just shadows and sunlight. Here’s one for your collection:
“So long as we love, we serve. So long as we are loved by others, I would almost say we are indispensable; and no man is useless when he has a friend.” ~Robert Louis Stephenson
@Adam Thanks Adam, I wasn’t aware of Randy’s work. I found his quote through a Google search but the site didn’t link his name to anything.
I totally agree with what you are saying. Failure has too much negative connotation and it’s time to change our perception of the word.
@Lisa Ahh how could I forget the “If at first you don’t succeed…” quote! Thank you!
@Mel that is a great way of looking at it, definitely less bite in feedback than in faillure.
@Janice Thought you’d like them and I just knew you’d have a great one to add. Thanks for continuing to share your wisdom with us.
How about:
To eat an egg, you must break the shell. -Jamaican Proverb
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -Andre Gide
Disappointments are to the soul what thunderstorms are to the air. -Johann Schiller
I got a million….
.-= Shawn´s last blog ..Book Review Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters =-.
Thanks for sharing Shawn. I like that last one about a thunderstorm.
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