Quotes About Failure

34 quotes

A child wobbles on a bicycle, one foot scraping the pavement, and the parent says nothing about the fall, only about getting back on. That scrape and wobble is where the subject begins. It covers small daily defeats and large public ones, the ones that feel final and the ones that turn out to be beginnings.

Maya Angelou says you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated, and that it may be necessary to encounter them so you can know who you are and what you can rise from. Abraham Lincoln is not concerned that you have fallen, only that you arise. Henry Ford calls failure the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. Theodore Roosevelt notes that it is hard to fail, but worse never to have tried to succeed. Each of them looks past the fall itself to what follows. George Orwell expects every book to be a failure, yet he knows with some clarity what kind of book he wants to write.
English author

I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.

— Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

English novelist and social critic

So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

— Great Expectations

British writer and journalist

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

— Why I Write

British writer and physician

In my inmost heart I believed that I could succeed where others failed, and now I had the opportunity to test myself.

— The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

6th-century BC semi-legendary Chinese philosopher, founder of Taoism

Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Masterfulfills her own obligationsand corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to doand demands nothing of others.

— Tao Te Ching

Ancient Greek playwright

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

— Antigone

German philosopher

...[H]uman reason in its pure use, so long as it was not critically examined, has first tried all possible wrong ways before it succeeded in finding the one true way.

— Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals: & the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics

43rd President of the United States

When you know you have unconditional love, there is no point in rebellion and no need to fear failure.

— Decision Points

Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete

My dear boy, the people who only love once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failures.

— The Picture of Dorian Gray

French novelist, journalist, playwright, and poet

Monsieur Josserand died very quietly - a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings that he had ever loved.

— Pot Luck

German philosopher

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

President of the United States

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

German writer, artist, natural scientist and politician

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

— Maxims and Reflections

American singer-songwriter

When all you wanted was to be wanted, you wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now.

— Taylor Swift: Fearless

English writer and poet

I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.

— Under The Deodars

Japanese novelist and poet

There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you. And then just when your regrets are the strongest the wisteria comes into bloom, and it blooms on into the summer. There is nothing quite like it. Even the color is somehow companionable and inviting.

— The Tale of Genji

Prime Minister of India from 1947 to 1964

Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objects and principles.