quotations about success
The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Tigers & Ice
Overnight success happens only in fairy tales, trashy novels, and bad movies.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
101 Really Important Things You Already Know But Keep Forgetting
Success is somebody else's failure.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Dancing at the Edge of the World
The greatest thing a man can possibly do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Success
Success is partly a matter of luck, and may be a question of cowardice. Just as cowards come back from wartime alive, so they may get rich and sleek and influential.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Balancing Acts
In Success few mornings frown;
For the youth, to view the town,
When morning came, with Sorrow went
Through statued park and street;
And they joined a gilded throng,
As it coldly moved along
Toward the temple built to Fortune,
Low to worship at her feet.
HENRY ABBEY
"The City of Success"
People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.
ANNE SULLIVAN
letter regarding her work with Helen Keller, October 30, 1887
Success,
The apple of ambition's eye;
The crooked prop of tyranny;
The wind that puffs the changeful sail;
That fills the tuneful pipe;
That gives a color to the pale,
A plumpness to the ripe;
Desire's counterpart,
That men most have at heart.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"Success", Imogen and Other Poems
Jealousy of other people's success is a sure sign that you feel unfulfilled in your own life. Seeing them enjoy the fruits of their labors is a painful reminder that you do not have what you want nor have you been actively seeking it.
DAVID J. LIEBERMAN
Instant Analysis
Success produces success, just as money produces money.
SÉBASTIEN CHAMFORT
Maximes et pensées
A great success is made up of an aggregation of little ones.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
I wrote a song about success, which I called "It Hasn't Happened Yet." Because success is never there. Success should always be just beyond your grasp.
WILLIAM SHATNER
Esquire, May 2012
It is not what happens that is success or failure, but what it does to the heart of man.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
The best way to ensure success is to start growing today. No matter where you may be starting from, don't be discouraged; everyone who got where he is started where he was.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Self-Improvement 101
The ideal of perfect Success is an ideal belonging to the same sort of individual as the inventor of Equal Rights of man and Perfectibility.
WYNDHAM LEWIS
Tarr
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
BOB DYLAN
Weekly World News, October 1, 1996
SUCCESS must first be created in mind. No matter what our vocation may be, we can generate thought force to carry us to the highest pinnacle of success.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Success", Human Life from Many Angles
Get the luck idea out of your head. There is such a thing as luck. But that is not what you are looking for. What you want is success. And there's no luck about that. It's just as certain as the corn crop to those who know how to raise it.
FRANK CRANE
"Ten Success Hunches", Four Minute Essays
My problem is that I don't get the same exhilaration from success as I get depression from failure.
STEVE MARTIN
Time Magazine, August 24, 1987