quotations about success
Success is a hidden jewel, and is found but by a few.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
The bitch-goddess, Success, was trailed by thousands of gasping dogs with lolling tongues.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
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
It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.
SAMUEL SMILES
Self-Help
Remember, success is buried on the other side of rejection. There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement
Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Success soon palls. The joyous time is, when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows.
CHARLES BUXTON
Notes of Thought
Success, which touches nothing that it does not vulgarize, should be its own reward.
ROBERT BONTINE CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
Success and Other Sketches
The greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.
EIJI YOSHIKAWA
Taiko
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
IRVING BERLIN
Theatre Arts, February 1958
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"
If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.
PABLO PICASSO
attributed, Picasso
Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.
VANESSA REDGRAVE
attributed, Good-bye Baby and Amen
Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
attributed, 101 Best Ways to Get Ahead
The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.
SAM SHEPARD
The Observer, March 20, 2010
delicate moment
saw you again
leap year summer
presence drew in
flies of success
squandered about
ritual fashion
leaving no doubt
you were a hit
plain to see
busy boulevard
hidden street
I prayed lightly
weaved my path
raise no question
how I survived
the aftermath
but I see no reason to covet
cause I'm just thinking
it all seems so amusing
failure and success
SACCHARINE TRUST
"Success and Failure"
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
There are none so low but they have their triumphs. Small successes suffice for small souls.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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