Failure

Losers walking around with money in their pockets are always dangerous, not to be trusted. Some horse always reaches out and grabs them.
~ Bill Barich, Laughing in the Hills (1980).

There is a triumph in defeat.
~ William Francis (W.F.) Barnard, The Tongues of Toil: And Other Poems (1911). Failure

[T]he perfect is the enemy of the good. If we fall short, there is no reason to despair, only more reason to try harder.
~ William John Bennett, Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems, and Speeches (1997).

Failure is an event, never a person.
~ William D. Brown, Welcome Stress! It Can Help You Be Your Best (1983).

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter I: To A Youth

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
~ Bill Cosby, in Ebony magazine, Vol. 32, No. 8 (June 1977). Dr. Bill Cosby

One leg by truth supported, one by lies,
They sidle to the goal with awkward pace,
Secure of nothing -- but to lose the race.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

There is only one real failure in life that is possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.
~ Frederick William Farrar

All of us failed to match our dream of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
~ William Faulkner (on his writing contemporaries), Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
~ William Feather

Take it off. Let me breath.
~ Willie Francis, quoted in the Court Affidavits of 3 official witnesses, in State of Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947).

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures.
~ J. William Fulbright, quoted in The Observer (21 December 1958). Sayings of the Year

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure -- all your life.
~ John William Gardner

[A]nd the darkness of our bedroom is soon full of the fallen shadows of our failures.
~ William H. Gass, from Habitations of the Word (1985).

Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.
~ William Goldman, in Event Horizon Web Productions, Inc., Flashpoint Weekly Chat (8 December 1998).

You shouldn't fear failure, because failures are valuable learning experiences. If everything you do works out well and you have no failures, it means you're not trying hard enough.
~ Wilson Greatbatch, in IEEE Spectrum (October 1999). Threshold of the new millennium

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole or ace, than if one has never had a chance of winning it.
~ William Hazlitt, Table-Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2nd series (1824). On Great and Little Things

The fad that fails is extinguished forever.
~ William Dean Howells, Fennel and Rue (1908).

Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out!
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures VI and VII: The Sick Soul

[W]e are all such helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic

Failure is often the rock-bottom foundation of real success.
~ William George Jordan, The Majesty of Calmness (1900). V: Failure as a Success

Many of our failures sweep us to greater heights of success, than we ever hoped for in our wildest dreams. Life is a successive unfolding of success from failure.
~ William George Jordan, The Majesty of Calmness (1900). V: Failure as a Success

We played hard and I don't think any guy has a reason to hold his head low except for me, because I want to kill myself.
~ Billy Koch, The San Jose Mercury News (8 October 2002). 'I cost us,' Koch says: Closer Takes Blame For A's Game 5 Loss

It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature.
~ William Lamb (2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne), in The Young Melbourne (1939).

And he is not unworthy who
Falls struggling manfully to do
What must be done, in dire distress,
That others may obtain success.
~ William James Lampton, If One Has Failed

It's not a mystery to me what happened with 9/11. ... These guys are out there. We knew they were out there. It was a failure of will on our part to address the situation 10 years before. ... There is no big mystery about it.
~ Bill Maher, CNN TV "Crossfire" (28 November 2002).

Losing streaks are funny. If you lose at the beginning, you are off to a bad start. If you lose in the middle of the season, you are in a slump. If you lose at the end, you're choking.
~ Gene William Mauch

What indeed can we each of us look for but a large measure of failure, especially when we are moving not with the tide but against it -- when the things we wrestle with are principalities and powers, and spiritual stupidity in high places -- and when we are ourselves partly weakened by the very influences against which we are struggling?
~ William Hurrell (W.H.) Mallock, Is Life Worth Living? (1879). To John Ruskin

If there is any single factor that makes for success in living, it is the ability to draw dividends from defeat.
~ William Moulten Marston, in The Forum (November 1937). Take Your Profits From Defeat

If you confuse defeat with failure, then you are doomed indeed to failure. For it isn't defeat that makes you fail; it is your own refusal to see in defeat the guide and incentive to success.
~ William Moulten Marston, in The Forum (November 1937). Take Your Profits From Defeat

There's no excuse for happy losers.
~ Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin

Failure has gone to his head.
~ Wilson Mizner (of a still-buoyant bankrupt), Attributed

Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

Success is never final, but failure can be.
~ Bill Parcells, Finding a Way to Win (1995).

[A]ny state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort, and if we fall, let us fall like men.
~ William Pitt (1st Earl of Chatham), Speech delivered in the House of Lords, Hansard (6 April 1778).

A society that fails to embrace a system of meritocracy breeds mediocrity and is doomed for failure.
~ William Henry Schloendorn III

It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight --
Why, that's the best game of all!
~ Robert William Service, The Quitter

Be cheerful, wipe thine eyes;
Some falls are means the happier to rise.
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Act IV, scene ii

O ye woods! spread your branches apace,
To your deepest recesses I fly;
I would hide with the beasts of the chase;
I would vanish from every eye.
~ William Shenstone, A Pastoral Ballad in Four Parts (written in 1743). IV. Disappointment

Like success, failure is many things to many people. With Positive Mental Attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order and prepare to try again.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

So many fail because they don't get started -- they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything -- and it works.
~ William Strong

Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.
~ Vincent Willem van Gogh

Should you meet with failure, be not discouraged: there is a cause some place which must be found.
~ William Sebastian Walsh, Yours For Sleep (1920). Chapter XII: Remedies for Sleeplessness

I'm a better and happier person today because of all the failure and embarrassment I've overcome.
~ William (Bill) Theodore Walton, III, in My Losing Season (October 2002).

Failure is delay, but not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end street.
~ William Arthur Ward

Failure is not fatal. Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. It should challenge us to new heights of accomplishments, not pull us to new depths of despair. From honest failure can come valuable experience.
~ William Arthur Ward

Men never plan to be failures; they simply fail to plan to be successful.
~ William Arthur Ward

The greatest failure is the failure to try.
~ William Arthur Ward

I know there are no errors,
In the great Eternal plan,
And all things work together
For the final good of man.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Whatever Is -- Is Best

If you fail the first time that's just a chance to start over again.
~ Lenny Wilkens

The man who tried his best and failed is superior to the man who never tried.
~ Bud Wilkinson

Failure's not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger.
~ Billy Dee Williams

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998). The Ionian Enchantment