Failure Quotes

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Everyone fails at some point in her life. Here's a collection of failure quotes to put things into perspective and encourage us to set forth courageously again.

When I was a kid in school I learned from a Chinese proverb that failure is the mother of success. I understood the saying back then but never really knew it till years later. Slowly, in the school of life, I learned that failures happened. I've failed at something sometimes and I learned that I don't die from my failures. Instead, each failure humbled me, taught me some lessons and I learned to pick myself up and move on.

Success tastes much sweeter when we know what failure tasted like. We appreciate success better when we have known failure before.

I hope this series of failure quotes encourage you while we continue on our journey towards success!

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.
-- May Sarton

A man may fall many times, but he won't be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.
-- Elmer G. Letterman

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
-- Charles F. Kettering

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.
-- Paulo Coelho

Do not waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
-- Zig Ziglar

Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
-- John Dewey

Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
-- Napoleon Hill

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.
-- Jim Rohn

Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.
-- Denis Waitley

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
-- Henry Ford

Failure is success if we learn from it.
-- Malcolm S. Forbes

Failure is the tuition you pay for success.
-- Walter Brunell

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
-- Denis Waitley

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
-- C.S. Lewis

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
-- Herbert B. Swope

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
-- Thomas Alva Edison

If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless.
-- Robert H. Schuller

If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win.
-- Walter Reuther

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
-- Mary Pickford

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.
-- Samuel Smiles

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.
-- Havelock Ellis

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose - not the one you began with perhaps, but one you'll be glad to remember.
-- Anne Sullivan

My reputation grows with every failure.
-- George Bernard Shaw

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.
-- Elaine Maxwell

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, "I have failed three times," and what happens when he says, "I am a failure."
-- S.I. Hayakawa

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

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

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.
-- Roger Von Oech

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.
-- Sven Goran Eriksson

There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them.
-- Tom Krause

There is something good in all seeming failures. You are not to see that now. Time will reveal it. Be patient.
-- Swami Sivananda

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.
-- Oprah Winfrey

We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.
-- Leo F. Buscaglia

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
-- Robert H. Schuller

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
-- Napoleon Hill

When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
-- Katherine Mansfield

You always pass failure on your way to success.
-- Mickey Rooney

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