This section cites quotations that convey insights relating to success, including both earned success (e.g., perfection) and unearned (i.e., luck).
You become successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal.
- anonymous
The harder you work..., the luckier you get.
- anonymous
Every noble work is at first impossible.
- anonymous
Look to this Day!
Yesterday is but a Dream
And Tomorrow is only a Vision:
But Today well-lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness.
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
--anonymous
People whom get down to brass tacks usually rise rapidly!
- anonymous
Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.
- anonymous
If you aim at nothing, you've got a good chance of hitting it.
- anonymous
Success is not made by lying awake at night, but by keeping awake in the daytime.
- anonymous
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
- anonymous
Driving a single thought home is better than leaving three on the bases.
- anonymous
Better it is to start and be wrong than never to start at all.
- anonymous
Too many people quit looking for work once they find a job.
- anonymous
Can one "kill time" without injuring eternity?
- anonymous
Life offers it's greatest challenge at the point when nothing seems challenging.
- anonymous
If I cannot do great things, I shall do small things ... in a great way.
- anonymous
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
- anonymous
True winners are those who have learned how to lose.
- anonymous
Dig a well before you are thirsty.
- Chinese proverb
A good man is neither puffed up by fleeting success nor broken by adversity.
- St. Augustine
Those who scorn perfection for the sake of travel, go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go everywhere, instantly.
- Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull)
It is most wretched to be using what has been attained, and never look to that which is to be attained.
- Roger Bacon
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
- Truman Capote
The man who in the view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends -- such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
- Confucius
At 15 my mind (heart) was set on learning.
At 30 my character had been formed.
At 40 I had no more perplexities.
At 50 I knew the mandate of Heaven.
At 60 I was at ease with whatever I heard.
At 70 I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing moral principles.
- Confucius (Analects 2:4)
The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tomorrow is just another name for today.
- W. Faulkner
The impossible is often the untried.
- Jim Goodwin
To rejoice at a success is not the same as taking credit for it. To deny oneself the first is to become a hypocrite and a denier of life; to permit oneself the second is a childish indulgence which will prevent one from ever growing up.
- Dag Hammarskjšld (Markings, p.109)
Only he who attempts the ridiculous can achieve the impossible.
- Will Henry
The sublime, yet never wholly attainable, idea of an ethical commonwealth dwindles markedly under men's hands.... How indeed can one expect something perfectly straight to be formed out of such crooked wood?
- Immanuel Kant (Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, pp.91-92)
A book succeeds when its margins are full.
- Erazim Kohak, (The Embers and the Stars, p.223)
The ultimate goal of the writer is silence.
- Oliver Lang (Do-It-Yourself Publishing, p.254)
If you cannot win, make the one ahead of you break the record.
- Jan McKeithen
He who has not failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
- Melville
When you insist you're not the kind of person who can climb a mountain or make a speech, all you are saying is that up to now you haven't done it.
- M. Newman
I read today the words of the Kotzker...: 'He who thinks that he has finished is finished.' How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.
- Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Genesee Diary, p.133)
Satisfaction and contentment cause more failures than lack of ability.
- P.R.S.
It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human.
- Will Rogers
Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War 3.4
Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War 10.26
To err is human; to blame it on the other party is politics.
Bill Vaughan
They are able because they think they are able.
- Virgil
wisdom
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This page was last updated on 20 November 1997.
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