quotations about success
Unless you have courage, a courage that keeps you going, always going, no matter what happens, there is no certainty of success. It is really an endurance race.
HENRY FORD
Theosophist Magazine, February 1930
Success never needs an excuse.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
speech, May 15, 1854
Success and failure are not dealt out like prizes and blanks in a lottery, by chance and indiscriminately; but there is a reason for every success and failure. Indolence, chicanery, waste will cause the one; while industry, honesty, and thrift will insure the other.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Q, August, 1992
For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
There are two unpardonable sins in this world -- success and failure.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Success is a pile of failure that you are standing on.
DAVE RAMSEY
daily tip, official Dave Ramsey website
We used to go out walkin' hand in hand you told me all the big things you had planned
It wasn't long till all your dreams came true success put me in second place with you
You have no time to love me anymore since fame and fortune knocked upon our door
Now I spend all my evenings all alone success has made a failure of our home
LORETTA LYNN
"Success"
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
JACK CANFIELD
The Success Principles
Success is ever a bad tree when evil is the root.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
In all things success depends on previous preparation, and without such previous preparation there is sure to be failure.
CONFUCIUS
The Doctrine of the Mean
Success is never assured, but having some challenges is almost always assured. Preparation to deal with those situations can reduce the hurdles and increase the prospects for success.
MARK KAPLAN
"Dealing with the certainty of change", New Hampshire Union Leader, July 9, 2017
All successful men have agreed in one thing--they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck, but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things. A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being, and, in consequence, belief in compensation, or, that nothing is got for nothing--characterizes all valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an industrious one. The most valiant men are the best believers in the tension of the laws.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Success is terrifying. Like happiness, it is often appreciated in retrospect. It's only later that you place it in perspective. Years from now, I'll look back and say, "God, wasn't it wonderful?"
JULIE ANDREWS
This Week, September 18, 1966
Success is a mix of sailing skill, grit, determination and improvisation; having to deal with broken yards, torn sails, capsizes and, in one instance, a rudder being washed away, not to mention the obligatory blisters, sand fly bites and sunburn that come with wild camping on deserted dessert islands.
ANONYMOUS
"Ngalawa Cup: The Nuclear Option", Scuttlebutt Sailing News, July 10, 2017
There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest romances of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious tract. Moreover, the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry; the religious tracts are about religion. But these things are about nothing; they are about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living; any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade or speculation--how, if he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder; how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer; and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal, and I really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish a book about electricity which literally told one nothing about electricity; no one would dare to publish an article on botany which showed that the writer did not know which end of a plant grew in the earth. Yet our modern world is full of books about Success and successful people which literally contain no kind of idea, and scarcely any kind of verbal sense.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Fallacy of Success", All Things Considered
Remember that your real success takes place inside your mind. It's not facts, nor others' acts, nor events, that matter. Nothing matters in the long run but the temper of your spirit. Keep thinking success; and the more you are rebuffed the harder you must think it.
FRANK CRANE
"Ten Success Hunches", Four Minute Essays