Quotes on Failure and Adversity
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit.

Conrad Hilton

Defeat isn't bitter if you don't swallow it.

Unknown

Disappointment should always be taken as a stimulant, and never viewed as a discouragement.

C. B. Newcomb

I feel that the most important requirement in success is learning to overcome failure. You must learn to tolerate it, but never accept it.

Reggie Jackson

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in the experience.

Elbert Hubbard

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

Florence Scovel Shinn

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

Andre Gide

When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

Mary Kay Ash

Enjoy the successes that you have, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't do well. Too many times we beat up on ourselves. Just relax and enjoy it.

Patty Sheehan

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

Duke Ellington

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

James Rogers

Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.

Julie Andrews

Sometimes when you walk through a maze, you have to go back to where you started to get where you want to go.

Duane Alan Hahn

It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired.

Robert Strauss

If I were to say, ''God, why me?'' about the bad things, then I should have said, ''God, why me?'' about the good things that happened in my life.

Arthur Ashe

If the truth be known, most successes are built on a multitude of failures.

Unknown

To despair is to turn your back on God.

'Marilla Cuthbert' from Anne of Green Gables

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Truman Capote

Failure is success if we learn from it.

Malcolm S. Forbes

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

James Russell Lowell

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.

African Proverb

The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.

Phil Weltman

TV is an endless cycle of producers tweaking something until it's unwatchable. That might mean changing hosts, changing the format, whatever. Shows need to evolve to stay interesting, but it's much easier to make big stupid changes then to actually fix little things that might be wrong with the original. They also always think, "Hey this is popular, let's rerun it 48 times a week and kill it!"

"Joey Bastard"

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind.

John Neal

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Bernice Johnson Reagon

We only think when we are confronted with a problem.

John Dewey

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

B. C. Forbes

It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Heraclitus

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

Horace

Not everything which is bad comes to hurt us.

Italian Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but rising every time we fall.

Confucius

Paralyze resistance with persistence.

Woody Hayes

The end of a dock is not an obstacle, it's an opportunity to get on a boat.

Duane Alan Hahn

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

Robert F. Kennedy

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

Laurens Van du Post

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.

Horace

The reward of suffering is experience.

Aeschylus

Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us.

Henry Ward Beecher

No pressure, no diamonds.

Mary Case

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

M. Kathleen Casey

Things don't go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.

Charles ''Tremendous'' Jones

Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds; all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.

Edward Everett Hale

Don't tell other people your troubles. Half of them aren't interested, and the other half will think you deserved it.

Unknown

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

Washington Irving

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

Lou Holtz

If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, ''Here comes number seventy-one!''

Richard M. DeVos

Some people are addicted to regret. Failure by way of self-sabotage is a way of life. They love the warm feeling of regret that washes over them whenever they reminisce. It's hard to give up, but the habit can be broken.

Duane Alan Hahn

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