more quotes, quotations and passages on failure

Only those who dare to fail greatly
can ever achieve greatly.

Robert Kennedy

Fear nothing, for every renewed effort raises all former failures into lessons, all sins into experience. Katherine Tingley

Failure is a reality; we all fail at times and it’s painful when we do. But it’s better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous and uncertain than to say, “I don’t want to try, because I may not succeed completely.” Jimmy Carter 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 afterward carefully avoid. John Keats

You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don’t win, at least you can be satisfied that you’ve tried. If you don’t accept failure as a possibility, you don’t set high goals, you don’t branch out, you don’t try—you don’t take the risk. Rosalynn Carter

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably those who never made a mistake never made a discovery. Samuel Smiles

Our greatest glory is not in never failing,
but in rising up every time we fail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Life's lessons come through failures probably more than successes.
Through our failures we learn humility. We learn to look to others
for help and guidance. We learn how to let others fail, too.
We fail because we are human. When we no longer fear failure, we are
free to attempt greater feats. We dare to learn more, and life is fuller
for it--not just our own lives, but the lives that we touch.

unattributed

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Malcolm Forbes

Commit yourself to a dream. . . . Nobody who tries to do
something great but fails is a total failure. Why? Because
they can always rest assured that they succeeded in life's
most important battle--they defeated the fear of trying.

Robert H. Schuller

No matter the goal you have set--if you have not quit, you have not failed.

Laura Teresa Marquez

Those who hope to avoid all failure and misfortune are
trying to live in a fairyland; wise people realistically accept
failures as a part of life and build philosophies to meet
them and make the best of them.

Wilferd A. Peterson

You need the ability to fail. I'm amazed at the number of
organizations that set up an environment where they do not
permit their people to be wrong. You cannot innovate
unless you are willing to accept some mistakes.

Charles Knight

Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something
to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. "Success is dangerous,"
the painter Pablo Picasso said. "One begins to copy oneself, and to copy
oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

Joan Chittister
Seeing with Our Souls

The sheer rebelliousness in giving ourselves permission to fail
frees a childlike awareness and clarity. . . . When we give ourselves
permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel.

Eloise Ristad

Even monkeys fall out of trees.

Japanese proverb

What a shame to be so afraid of failure that you stop living.
My wife has a great one-liner about failure: "Never consider
yourself a failure--you can always serve as a bad example."
She is right. Failure can be a better teacher than success.

Bernie Siegel

Articles and book excerpts on failure:

Find and Heal the Inner Issues That Run Your Life Bill Ferguson
I Resolve to Fail Lena Sanchez

What can any of us do with our talent but try to develop our vision, so that
through frequent failures we may learn better what we missed in the past.

William Carlos Williams

There really is no such thing as failure. There is only
the rearrangement of plans and surrender of ego.

Susan Falter-Barns

"You're making a common mistake," he said. "You're thinking of
failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. Failure is
a teacher--a harsh one, perhaps, but the best. You say you have
a desk full of rejected manuscripts? That's great! Every one of
those manuscripts was rejected for a reason. Have you pulled
them to pieces looking for that reason? That's what I have to do
when an idea backfires or a sales program fails.
You've got to put failure to work for you."

He folded his napkin and put it beside his plate. "You can be
discouraged by failure--or you can learn from it. So go ahead
and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember,
that's where you'll find success. On the far side of failure."

Arthur Gordon,
quoting Thomas J. Watson

In every failure is the seed of success.

unattributed

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only
failure a person ought to fear is failure in cleaving to
the purpose he or she sees to be best.

George Eliot

Because a person has failed once or a dozen times, you don't
set them down as a failure until he or she is dead or loses
courage--and that's the same thing.

George Horace Lorimer

Failures

'Tis better to have tried in vain,
Sincerely striving for a goal,
Than to have lived upon the plain
An idle and a timid soul.

'Tis better to have fought and spent
Your courage, missing all applause,
Than to have lived in smug content
And never ventured for a cause.

For those who try and fail may be
The founders of a better day;
Though never theirs the victory,
From them shall others learn the way.

Edgar Guest

failure

"When I was a young man," he said, "the last wolf in this part of the
country was hunted down and killed. The newcomers to this land
brought their long-held fears of the wolf with them. The newcomers
thought, and still think, that the wolf was successful because he loved
to kill and was good at it. To them, he was evil and had to be killed.
They didn't realize that he failed more than he succeeded. He went
hungry eight or nine times out of ten because his prey got away. When
he finally succeeded the tenth time, he satisfied his hunger. What others
saw as a lust for killing was really perseverance. That was the secret
of his success: He never quit."

Joseph M. Marshall III

For every failure, there's an alternative course of action. You just
have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

Mary Kay Ash

Fear of failure

So much of life involves risk
and the possibility of failure.
If you are not afraid of failure,
you will take many more risks
in your life.
The more risks you take,
the more alive you will feel.
You are afraid of failure
because you fear rejection.
The moment you give up seeking
acceptance from others,
your fear of rejection will disappear.
And with it, the fear of failure.

Leonard Jacobson

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There is a distinction between failing and being a failure. Few things are learned
in life without failing at least once. Did you learn to roller skate without falling
a few times? Did you learn to ride a bike without losing your balance? Chances
are you didn't. You may have wanted to do those things so intensely that you
quickly put unsuccessful attempts behind you and kept trying. Soon you acquired
the skill to do the thing you wanted. Even though in the process of learning you may
have failed many times, you were not a failure. "Failing" simply
became an open door to try again.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.

Marion Wright Edelman

Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step
toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what
is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every
adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.

Og Mandino

Even after the greatest defeats, the depressing thought of being a failure
is best combated by taking stock of all your past achievements.

Hans Selye

I had rather attempt something great and fail,
than to attempt nothing at all and succeed.

Robert Schuller
Tough Times Never Last

If I'm not free to fail, I'm not free to take risks, and everything in life
that's worth doing involves a willingness to take a risk and involves
the risk of failure. . . I have to try, but I do not have to succeed.

Madeleine L'Engle