Quotes · Skopia

44 quotes

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.1

Essay

All rising to great place is by a winding stair.

Francis Bacon

1625

★ 7.0

Showing up is 80 percent of life.

Woody Allen

1977

★ 7.0

Speech · Commencement address

You don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you.

Fred Rogers

2002

★ 7.0

Play

Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

T.S. Eliot

1939

★ 6.9

TV commercial

I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Michael Jordan

1997

★ 6.2

Speech · Political speech

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that.

Barack Obama

2012

★ 5.4

Speech · Commencement address

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff.

Fred Rogers

2002

★ 5.2

A purpose is the eternal condition of success. Nothing will take its place. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb... Education will not; the country is full of unsuccessful educated men... There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose.

Theodore T. Munger

On the Threshold · 1881

★ 5.1

Speech · Political speech

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there–good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

Elizabeth Warren

2011

★ 4.5

Essay

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Letter

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.

Abraham Lincoln

1855

★ 3.8

Letter

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Mark Twain

1887

★ 3.8

Poem · Newspaper

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need.

Emily Dickinson

1864

★ 3.7

Speech

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

Theodore Roosevelt

1899

★ 3.7

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

Bessie Anderson Stanley

1905

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning · 1946

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Success is more dangerous than failure, (the ripples break over a wider coastline).

Graham Greene

1980

★ 3.5

Film · Black comedy (film) · Comedy drama (film) · Black comedy · Comedy drama

Call me crazy, but it is my philosophy that in order to be successful, one must project an image of success, at all times.

Buddy Kane

American Beauty · 1999

★ 3.5

Interview · Magazine

Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis, and suicide. With failure comes failure.

Joseph Heller

Playboy Magazine · 1975

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

Confucius

Analects · 221 BC

★ 2.4

Play · Comedy (play)

Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.

William Shakespeare

Measure for Measure · 1616

★ 2.2

Almanac

Success has ruin’d many a Man.

Benjamin Franklin

1752

★ 2.2

Scripture · Religious literature

May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.

Psalm 20:4

450 BC

★ 2.1

Letter

I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.

Florence Nightingale

1861

★ 2.1

Speech

The secret of success is constancy of purpose.

Benjamin Disraeli

1872

★ 2.0

Letter

Success is a result; it must not be a goal.

Gustave Flaubert

1876

★ 2.0

Newspaper

If A is a success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X; Y is play; and Z is keeping your mouth shut.

Albert Einstein

1950

★ 2.0

Interview · Magazine

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.

Pablo Picasso

1956

★ 2.0

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

Bill Gates

1995

★ 2.0

Play · Tragedy (play)

And he who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an Excellence.

John Dryden

1669

★ 1.9

Essay

In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Montesquieu

1755

★ 1.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1821

★ 1.9

Interview

I don't talk about success, I don't know what it is. Wait until I'm dead.

Imogen Cunningham

1975

★ 1.9

Novel

The business world contains plenty of successful men who have no brains.

Abraham Cahan

The Rise of David Levinsky · 1917

★ 1.9

Newspaper

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

Stubby Currence

1935

★ 1.9

Letter

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. That-with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success-is our national disease.

William James

1906

★ 1.8

Novel

There is only one success, he said to himself-to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Christopher Morley

1922

★ 1.8

Biography

Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least.

Leonardo da Vinci

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects · 1568

★ 1.3

Personal journal

He never lets the logic of principle, displace the logic of success.

Abraham Lincoln

1859

★ 1.3

Success to me is having ten honeydew melons and eating only the top half of each one.

Barbra Streisand

Life Magazine · 1963

★ 1.2

Essay

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

Albert Einstein

1931

★ 1.1

Biography

The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people.

George Bernard Shaw

1949

★ 1.1

Interview

I think it's an essential fact for any performer or artist to fail as poignantly as they can succeed.

Nick Cave

1983

★ 1.0

Sourced and curated.