Success & Failure Quotes — page 13

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.

Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis, and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.

Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping.

There never was yet a people who must not have somebody or something to represent the dignity of the state, the majesty of the people, call it what you will — a doge, an avoyer, an archon, a president, a consul, a syndic; this becomes at …

A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with his success to ask anything farther.

Emotion, feeling — these are well enough if they feed the springs of power. Prayer, praise, preaching — these are all good and never to be dispensed with; but if the life to which they minister have no manifestation out of them, it is a …

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our …

The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss.

We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.

It is impossible to deny that dishonest men often grow rich and famous, becoming powerful in their parish or in parliament. Their portraits simper from shop windows; and they live and die respected. This success is theirs; yet it is not …

If every individual is to indulge his private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all authority be destroyed.

Constitutional statutes … which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern — can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the …

[[Manufacturing|[M]anufacture]] of here was almost an impossibility..; if... by hand-work it would be very dear, and if by machinery.., probab[ly]... too heavy and useless. ...[O]bstacles and difficulties seemed insuperable, and hope …

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

It is understood that a defensive fleet does not merely serve to protect the interests of the traders of our great commercial cities, but that it is also needed, and bitterly needed, for the protection of the industry of our entire people …

The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is on that on which our success in life depends.

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.

I do what many dream of, all their lives, — Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing.

'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll deserve it.

To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.

Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.