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FAILURE
See also RISK, SUCCESS
If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
BILL LYON
The man who tried his best and failed is superior to the man who never tried.
BUD WILKINSON
Far better it is 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 the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
T. H. HUXLEY
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
THOMAS EDISON
No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
LILY TOMLIN
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
WILLIAM SAROYAN
Zeus does not bring all men's plans to fulfillment.
HOMER
You said, "but." I've put my finger on the whole trouble. You're a "but" man. Don't say, "but." That little word "but" is the difference between success and failure. Henry Ford said, "I'm going to invent the automobile," and Arthur T. Flanken said, "But . . ."
SGT. ERNIE BILKO THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure which is: Try to please everybody.
HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE
There is no failure except in no longer trying.
ELBERT HUBBARD
Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
We are all of us failures—at least, the best of us are.
JAMES BARRIE
Flops are a part of life's menu and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.
ROSALIND RUSSELL
FAME
Also See SUCCESS
Fame is only good for one thing—they will cash your check in a small town.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
FAMILY
See also FAMILY VALUES
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
W. B. YEATS
Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.
EDMUND LEACH
The Family! Home of all social evils, a charitable institution for indolent women, a prison workshop for the slaving breadwinner, and a hell for children.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
FAMILY VALUES
See also FAMILY, MARRIAGE
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.
PETER DE VRIES
My parents have been visiting me for a few days. I just dropped them off at the airport. They leave tomorrow.
MARGARET SMITH
Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-five now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
ELLEN DEGENERES
FRED SANFORD: Didn't you learn anything being my son? Who do you think I'm doing this all for? LAMONT SANFORD: Yourself. FRED: Yeah, you learned something.
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
GEORGE BURNS
Dear United States Army: My husband asked me to write a recommend that he supports his family. He cannot read, so don't tell him. Just take him. He ain't no good to me. He ain't done nothing but raise hell and drink lemon essence since I married him eight years ago, and I got to feed seven kids of his. Maybe you can get him to carry a gun. He's good on squirrels and eating. Take him and welcome. I need the grub and his bed for the kids. Don't tell him this, but just take him.
HAND-DELIVERED IN 1943 BY AN ARKANSAS MAN TO HIS DRAFT BOARD
Wallpaper design for the marital bedroom:
EXCUSE ME COULD YOU PLEASE SAY THAT AGAIN I DON'T BELIEVE I HEARD YOU CORRECTLY LISTEN JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FOR GOD'S SAKE WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR SERVANT DON'T YOU DARE TALK TO ME IN THAT TONE OF VOICE I GUESS WE JUST AREN'T MEANT TO BE TOGETHER THAT'S ALL I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOU THAT'S RIGHT YOU HEARD ME THAT'S NOT MEANT TO BE A THREAT WE'RE JUST IN DIFFERENT TIMES IN OUR LIFE OK GO AHEAD THEN LEAVE I'LL HELP YOU PACK YOUR BAGS I GUESS WE DON'T NEED TO BE TOGETHER OH THAT'S CUTE REAL CUTE I DON'T HAVE TO STAND FOR.
DAN GREENBURG & SUZANNE O'MALLEY
My wife was in labor with our first child for thirty-two hours and I was faithful to her the whole time.
JONATHAN KATZ
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Dad worked hard for us, he provided for us, and he certainly didn't want to have to talk to us on top of that.
KEVIN ARNOLD THE WONDER YEARS
GRANNY: Why don' y' just shoot me like an ol' horse an' sell m' body fer glue? JED CLAMPETT: Now, Granny, that's ridiculous. JETHRO BODINE: Yeah, you wouldn't make enough glue fer a — JED: Don't help me, boy!
THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES
I wish I knew how customs like this get started; it would make them easier to stamp out.
MARTIN LANE THE PATTY DUKE SHOW
BEN CARTWRIGHT: I'm not in the habit of giving lectures, and if I do, it's because they're needed. Might have been a good idea if your father had given you a few. CANDY CANADAY: Oh, he did. BEN: Obviously they didn't have much effect. CANDY: Oh, yes they did; I left home.
BONANZA
I think our parents got together in 1946 and said, "Let's have lots of kids and give them everything they want, so that they can grow up and be totally messed up and unable to cope with life."
HOPE STEADMAN THIRTYSOMETHING
My father worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget this big. It does everything that my father does, only it does it much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one.
FAITH
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
FEAR
See also ANXIETY, WORRY
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
MICHAEL PRITCHARD
Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.
ARISTOTLE
For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.
LUCRETIUS
To him who is in fear, everything rustles.
SOPHOCLES
I'm a paranoiac, baby, so I hope you don't make the mistake of laboring under the false impression that you are talking to a sane person.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
SYDNEY HOOK
It is better to be a coward for a minute than to be dead the rest of your life.
PROVERB
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I've lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win
by fearing to attempt.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time.
RENE AUBERJONOIS
Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.
Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
DR. DAVID M. BURNS
A coward dies a hundred deaths, a brave man only once . . . But then, once is enough, isn't it?
JUDGE HARRY STONE NIGHT COURT
I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experiences behind him.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
All through the five acts he played the King as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the Ace.
EUGENE FIELD
FEAR OF FEAR
The thing I fear most is fear.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Nothing is terrible except fear itself.
FRANCIS BACON
The only thing I am afraid of is fear.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
FICKLENESS
That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
FORGETTING
Necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt the heaviest ore of the body into purity.
D. H. LAWRENCE
To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.
CONFUCIUS
A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
ELBERT HUBBARD
To err is human To forgive takes restraint; To forget you forgave Is the mark of a saint.
SUZANNE DOUGLASS
FORGIVING
She got even in a way that was almost cruel. She forgave them.
RALPH McGILL on Eleanor Roosevelt
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
HEINRICH HEINE
If I owe Smith ten dollars, and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.
DAVID AUGSBURGER
God may forgive you, but I never can.
QUENN ELIZABETH I
Of course God will forgive me; that's his business.
HEINRICH HEINE last words
The American public would forgive me anything except running off with Eddie Fisher.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY
Love is an act of endless forgiveness.
PETER USTINOV
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Here is a mental treatment guaranteed to cure every ill that flesh is heir to: sit for half an hour every night and mentally forgive everyone against whom you have any ill will or antipathy.
CHARLES FILLMORE
Always forgive your enemies—nothing annoys them so much.
OSCAR WILDE
Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
HANNAH ARENDT
FREEDOM
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
JULES RENARD
In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
BERNARD BARUCH
You have everything but one thing, madness. A man needs a little madness or else—he never dares cut the rope and be free.
ZORBA THE GREEK
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from Heaven.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
Liberty is a beloved discipline.
GEORGE C. HOMANS
As soon as man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, his activity is play.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
To be free is to have achieved your life.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Free your mind and your ass will follow.
GEORGE CLINTON
Man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them.
IVAN ILLICH
FRIENDSHIP
The best mirror is an old friend.
GEORGE HERBERT
A friend is a gift you give yourself.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs.
W. S. GILBERT on dining with friends
A friend, I am told, is worth more than pure gold.
POPEYE
Wealth brings many friends, but a poor man's friend deserts him.
PROVERBS 19:4
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
SAMUEL BUTLER
To whom can I speak today? I am heavy-laden with trouble Through lack of an intimate friend.
THE MAN WHO WAS TIRED OF LIFE, 1990 B.C.
A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
ECCLESIASTICUS 6:16
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
ANAIS NIN
Elysium is as far as to The very nearest Room If in that Room a Friend await Felicity or Doom—what Fortitude the Soul contains, That it can so endure The accent of a coming Foot—The opening of a Door.
EMILY DICKINSON
For memory has painted this perfect day with colors that never fade, and we find at the end of a perfect day the soul of a friend we've made.
CARRIE JACOBS BOND
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.
EVELYN WAUGH
The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
If you want to make a friend, let someone do you a favor.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.
STING, 1980
Friendship's much more important to me [now] than what I thought success was.
STING, 1990
FUN
See also ENJOYMENT
Getting there isn't half the fun—it's all the fun.
ROBERT TOWNSEND
The world is a stage, the stage is a world of entertainment!
HOWARD DIETZ
If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Leisure time is the five or six hours when you sleep at night.
GEORGE ALLEN
The parties all reminded me of the Gay Nineties—all the men are gay and the women are in their nineties.
ALICE-LEONE MOATS describing Philadelphia society
Baseball is fun for you & me. There is batting and fielding and making an out, There is doubles & triples and even home runs, But what I like about baseball is for the fun.
MATT BOHN at age 11
A good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from souring.
MARK TWAIN
The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
VOLTAIRE
There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT January 22, 1911
Copyright © 1996 Prelude Press, Inc. site credits