Failing Once Quotes & Sayings

The parents are making threatening noises, turning dinner into performance art, with dad doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation and mom playing Glenn Close in one of her psycho roles. I am the Victim.
Mom: [creepy smile] "Thought you could put one over us, did you, Melinda? Big high school students now, don't need to show your homework to your parents, don't need to show any failing test grades?"
Dad: [bangs table, silverware jumps] "Cut the crap. She knows what's up. The interim reports came today. Listen to me, young lady. I'm only going to say this to you once. You get those grades up or your name is mud. Hear me? Get them up!" [Attacks baked potato.] — Laurie Halse Anderson

The small launch bay was littered with debris. A powerful breeze tore at his black silk shirt as Kilroy made his way across it to the waiting shuttle, evoking a feeling like the fingers of fate were caressing his body. "The Hammer" stepped over the body of one of his fallen crew without a trace of care or concern. The air was rushing past him, like a wind, out into space through the wounds in the side of his ship. Fatigued and desperate, the Hammer was running out of options. His ship was a mess, holed in a dozen places, the life support systems failing. Weakened hull sections were collapsing in pressure bursts. The vibrations that shook the deck beneath him now were not from the engines that once drove her forward, but now from the explosions down below, tearing her apart. — Christina Engela

Make up a recipe for a successful revolution."
"Take large masses of injustice, resentment and frustration. Put them in a week or failing hegemon. Sir in misery for a generation or two, until the heat rises. Throw in destabilizing circumstances to taste. A tiny pinch of event to catalyze the whole. Once the main goal of the revolution is achieved, cool instantly to institutionalize the new order. — Kim Stanley Robinson

We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way. — Henry Ford

Things
changing, failing apart, fading, another year, a few more
moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so
monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by
people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any
sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations
so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever
matching them. — Bret Easton Ellis

The World. Hugo had once told Nathaniel in Will's presence, was made by many men, but shaped by few. The important thing was to be one of those few; to find a place in which you could change the repetitive patterns of the many Through political influence and intellectual discourse, and failing either of these , through benign coercion. — Clive Barker

I am Death Walker, Grief Bringer, Daughter of Carnage. I have walked through fields of blood, nimbly stepping over corpses the way a dancer steps onto a stage. I am the Queen of War, knee deep in fallen life, up to elbows in warm failing flesh. The slip of intestine against my fingers, the feel of once strong hands gripping at me, begging me to save them. — Gea Haff

Celeborn is more fixed in his beliefs and methods than Galadriel, which is his failing, perhaps. As a team, they work well, although apparently they only have sex once every 2,000 years or so. — Marton Csokas

Despite the seriousness of our moment, I write with optimism. Once aware, we can begin to rethink our practices. When we do, conversation is there to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure. — Sherry Turkle

Take childcare for example, an issue that never gets much support beyond lip service in the feminist world, despite it being something that would benefit the majority of women. Once you reach a certain income level, it's easier and more convenient for you to take care of your own childcare needs than to pay the taxes or contribute to a system that would help all women. If your child is in a failing school, it's much more convenient to place your child in a private or charter school than to organize ways to improve the situation for the entire community. This also applies to expanding social welfare programs, supporting community clinics, and so on. As a woman's ability to take care of herself expands thanks to feminist efforts, the feminist goals she's willing to really fight for, or contribute time and money and effort to, shrink. — Jessa Crispin

... it is a matter of record that in our sorry age with its prejudice in favour of male children many poor families donated to their favoured cult-temple the daughters they could not afford to marry off or feed, in the hope that they might live in holiness as servants or, if they were fortunate, as dancers; vain hopes, alas, for in many cases the priests in charge of these temples were men in whom the highest standards of probity were mysteriously absent, a failing which laid them open to offers of cash on the nail for the young virgins and not-quite-virgins and once-again-virgins in their charge. Thus Abraham the spice merchant was able to use his widespread Southern connections to harvest a new crop, entered in his most secret ledgers as 'Garam Masala Super Quality', and also, I note with some embarrassment, 'Extra Hot Chilli Peppers: Green. — Salman Rushdie

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you'd never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life. — Mark Owens

It was not me failing that I was scared of. It was failing those people back home who believe in you. They only delivered the newspaper once a week where I lived in Oklahoma, and those people lived and died with the box score of my games. — Johnny Bench

The ludicrous fever of toys struggling skyward, the sky itself more and more remote, the wind tearing the awning of cloud to tatters, pale limitless blue and green recessions laced with strands of scud, the light failing - once she would have noticed these things. — Samuel Beckett

The ... promptitude with which many painters, on arriving at an entirely new and unfamiliar place, settle down to work at once, never fails to astonish me: it seems indecent, like button-holing a complete stranger. — Augustus John

You will fail. At some point. More than once. Guaranteed. Proceed anyway. — Danielle LaPorte

Once you permit yourself to compromise, you fail yourself. — Dean Karnazes

There are many examples that show that events with very small probability are not miraculous. In fact, they're commonplace. Mathematician J.E. Littlewood suggested that each one of us should expect one-in-a-million events to happen to us about once every month. Failing to recognize this is due to us ignoring the astronomically high number of events that occur which we find insignificant. Events that we do find significant, such as winning a lottery or dreaming about your mother calling you right before waking up to her call are just a tiny fraction of many other insignificant events with the same or even lower probability of occurring, such as the chance that you had a dream of your mother calling you and also running out of milk five days after at 7:21 am. — Armin Navabi

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes. — George Soros

Just because you've failed once, it doesn't mean you're going to fail at everything. — Marilyn Monroe

Children play at being great and wonderful people, at the ambitions they will put away for one reason or another before they grow into ordinary men and women. Mankind as a whole had a like dream once; everybody and nobody built up the dream bit by bit, and the ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires.
from a preface to
Gods and Fighting Men
by Lady Augusta Gregory — W.B.Yeats

But I think you're failing to understand exactly what a dissertation is supposed to be. It's not meant to change the world or revolutionize the way we think about anything. It's meant to be a document that I can read and the rest of the committee can read to show us that you have enough understanding to warrant a PhD. That's all. Once you have the PhD, once you leave here, or stay here and become a professor, that's when your real work will start. — Chad Kultgen

As every barrier to the constraint of individualism is removed - as 'I' and 'my' appear in the names of more and more software applications and IT products - nevertheless today's rampant mimeticism ensures that 'I' and 'my' become less and less differentiated from 'you' and 'yours'...We crave differentiation, and deprived of it we blame the failing institutions that once might have delivered it. — Scott Cowdell

This year, Keystone charges $21,750 in tuition and fees. In comparison, UPenn docked $9,600 for the same in 1984, so for the current cost of a Keystone education, once could attend an Ivy League school for two years, with enough bouncing coins left over for many cases of beer and bong hits. UPenn's tuition and fees are now $47,668. Of course, wages haven't increased fivefold in thirty years. The obscene overpricing of a diluted education is yet another sign that we're failing future generations. To stuff the pockets of a few smirking old farts and their precious scions, countless young people are maimed. — Linh Dinh

The place had enormous possibilities. He realized that at once. The stream, of course, was perfect for sailing toy boats, for skipping stones, and, in the event of failing inspiration, for falling into. Several of the trees appeared to have been specifically designed for climbing, and one huge, white old birch overhanging the stream promised the exhilarating combination of climbing a tree and falling into the water, all at one time. — David Eddings

But see, the incredible thing about people is that we forget," Ray continued. "Time passes and somehow the hope creeps back and sooner or later someone else comes along all over again. We go through our lives like that, and either we just accept the lesser relationship
it may not be total understanding, but it's pretty good
or we keep trying for the perfect union, trying and failing, leaving behind us a trail of broken hearts, our own included. In the end, we die as alone as we were born, having struggled to understand others, to make ourselves understood, but having failed in what we once imagined was possible. — Nicole Krauss

Poor, dear old Mack, he was ninety-eight per cent perfect. His two percent failing was that he had absolutely no idea of the value or the power of arbitration. He was the veteran of a hundred battles, and I never once could say to the other fellow, 'Your dog started it. — William S. Hart

His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything. — W. Somerset Maugham

I was born to fight devils and factions. It is my business to remove obstacles, to cut down thorns, to fill up quagmires and to open and make straight paths. If I must have some failing let me rather speak the truth with too great sincerity than once to act the hypocrite and conceal the truth. — Martin Luther

Humans are really stupid. If we don't fall and get hurt, we won't learn our lesson. Just like a kid repeatedly falling.

No matter how many times we fail, or how many times we've fallen. Humans will stand once again, smiling ruefully at our grazed knees before continuing onwards. This time we will not run from our pain. — Yuuri Eda

Now or neverI 'To be or not to be!' - Oblomov raised himself from his chair a little, but failing to find his slippers with his feet at once, sat down again. — Ivan Goncharov

We're once again just a boy and a girl searching and failing for words and moments that transcend the mundane. — A.J. Compton

Live for the gifts the fragrant-breasted Muses
send, for the clear, the singing, lyre, my children.
Old age freezes my body, once so lithe,
rinses the darkness from my hair, now white.
My heart's heavy, my knees no longer keep me
up through the dance they used to prance like fawns in.
Oh, I grumble about it, but for what?
Nothing can stop a person's growing old.
They say that Tithonus was swept away
in Dawn's passionate, rose-flushed arms to live
forever, but he lost his looks, his youth,
failing husband of an immortal bride. — Sappho

If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics. — Mark Cuban

Failure does not exist. Failure is simply someone else's opinion of how a certain act should have been completed. Once you believe that no act must be performed in any specific other-directed way, then failing becomes impossible. — Wayne Dyer

There is a distinction between failing and being a failure. Few things are learned in life without failing at least once. Did you learn to roller skate without falling a few times? Did you learn to ride a bike without losing your balance? Chances are you didn't. You may have wanted to do those things so intensely that you quickly put unsuccessful attempts behind you and kept trying. Soon you acquired the skill to do the thing you wanted. Even though in the process of learning you may have failed many times, you were not a failure. "Failing" simply became an open door to try again. — John Templeton

Women on the way up generally fail to win popularity contests. The only compensation is that once you're there you will become very well liked. — Lois Wyse

Never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. — Swami Vivekananda

The greatest drawback to true love was that once true love unexpectedly ends there is no other romance that can replace it. Romance instead becomes a race, with one's new beau consistently failing to meet up to the grand expectations set by the meaning of one's existence. The only one. — Denis Fitzpatrick

Failing once in awhile is inevitable. The question is which way are we falling most of the time. Are we falling Backward or Forward, Downward or Forward? — Assegid Habtewold

Failing once doesn't make you a failure. One difference between a successful person and an average person is how much criticism they can take, the average person cannot take much criticism and that's why they fail to be leaders and they do remain average all their lives — Robert Kiyosaki

I have never, not once, gone on television and not received some email or tweet or comment about my hair. Without fail. Isn't that absurd? All it does is make me want to shape my bangs into a sort of middle finger-like sculpture. — Sally Kohn

There is a fallible quality even in the greatest ones,everyone fails once in a while, be it Shah Rukh Khan or Ronaldhino — Shahrukh Khan

When lack of structure fails, it fails all at once. What works totally fine from 0-20 employees, is disastrous at 30. — Sam Altman