Famous Quotes

"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 he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."

Samuel Smiles on Failure

More quotes about Failure

• "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

  Theodore Roosevelt on Failure

• "I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying."

  Michael Jordan on Failure

• "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

  Calvin Coolidge on Failure

• "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."

  Abraham Lincoln on Failure

• "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

  Steve Jobs on Failure

More quotes by Samuel Smiles

• "Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step."

• "Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they go, but, without the discipline of real life, they remain of the nature of theory only."

• "The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom."

• "It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success they much oftener succeed through failures. Precept, study, advice, and example could never have taught them so well as failure has done."

• "The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty."