quotations about success
There are very few cases of overnight success. Most success cases--including rock bands who seem to explode out of nowhere--involve longer term persistence and commitment to an interest.
PATRICK COMBS
Major in Success
Success is an easy road (when gained).
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
When things go well, you should be suspicious. When things go exceptionally well, start sniffing for the dog crap on the bottom of your shoe.
ROB THURMAN
Nightlife
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, Telling It Like It Is
Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
The worst use that can be made of success is to boast of it.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
You can make a lot of money. You can rule kingdoms or run huge businesses or control vast terrain. But if you're just doing it for yourself, you're not really a success.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Unlimited Power: a Black Choice
I think, likewise, that some sense of being successful lies in knowing what scale you work best in. I give some examples: an astronomer is one whose mind can work on a cosmic scale. A physicist is one whose mind can handle the quantum scale. A theologian the metaphysical scale. A psychiatrist works with the deep picture and on and on and on. I think many people die confused and unfulfilled, because they spend a life trying to perform above or even below their abilities and perspective. They are in the wrong scale.
ROBERT FULGHUM
interview, Future Health, January 14, 2010
Success occurs when your dreams get bigger than your excuses.
ANONYMOUS
There are some persons who never succeed from being too indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail, because the instant they find success in their power, they grow indifferent, and give over the attempt.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Success is somebody else's failure.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Dancing at the Edge of the World
Success is a moving target.
TIM WATCKINS
"What does success look like for Baylor football in 2017?", Scout, July 10, 2017
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
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"
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
No matter whether failure came
A thousand different times,
For one brief moment of success,
Life rang its golden chimes.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"I Am Content"
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,
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
The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.
SMILEY BLANTON
Love or Perish
Most of us go through life borrowing someone else's definition of success rather than coming up with our own!
TOMMY NEWBERRY
Success Is Not an Accident