I'm A Failure Quotes & Sayings

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else. — Kiera Van Gelder

Make excellent mistakes.
Too many people spend their time avoiding mistakes. They're so concerned about being wrong, about messing up, that they never try anything
which means they never do anything. Their focus is avoiding failure. But that's actually a crummy way to achieve success. The most successful people spectacular mistakes
huge, honking screwups! why? They're trying to do something big, but each time they make a mistake, they get a little better and move a little closer to excellence.
Making mistakes seems risky. It is/ But it's more risky not to.
I'm not talking about random, stupid, thoughtless blunders, though. I'm talking about good mistakes.
Mistakes come from having high aspirations, from trying to do something nobody else has done. — Daniel H. Pink

I'm a perfectly equipped failure. ( ... ) 'Thank goodness you're a failure- it's why I so distinguish you! Anything else to-day is too hideous. Look about you- look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour? — Henry James

My heart smites me still for being unlike Epaphras, who "laboured fervently in prayers".' 'One terrible failure confronted me everywhere, viz.: "Ye have asked nothing in my name." "[w]ant of prayer in right measure and manner;" "Had some almost overwhelming sense of sins of omission in the days past. If I had only prayed more;" "Oh, that I had prayed a hundred-fold more. — David M. McIntyre

I've learned so many things and a lot of things I've learned the hard way. I look at failure as education in that respect I'm very well educated. — Kathy Ireland

I've proven that I'm not a complete failure. Every film has done well. It's like, 'So, okay, when do I get my deal at Warner Bros?' — Julie Delpy

My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure. — Natalie Cole

I didn't know, nor have I ever discovered, who let go first. I'm not prepared to accept that it was me. But everyone claims not to have been first. What is certain is that if we had not broken ranks, our collective weight would have brought the balloon to earth a quarter of the way down the slope a few seconds later as the gust subsided. But as I've said, there was no team, there was no plan, no agreement to be broken. No failure. So can we accept that it was right, every man for himself? Were we all happy afterwards that this was a reasonable course? We never had that comfort, for there was a deeper covenant, ancient and automatic, written in our nature. Co-operation - the basis of our earliest hunting successes, the force behind our evolving capacity for language, the glue of our social cohesion. Our misery in the aftermath was proof that we knew we had failed ourselves. But letting go was in our nature too. Selfishness is also written in our hearts. — Ian McEwan

I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure. — George W. Bush

I'm willing to work with anyone of either party who has a good idea and the commitment to see through. And we should all expect you to hold us accountable for our progress or our failure to deliver. — Barack Obama

You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, 'I don't care how hard this is, I don't care how disappointed I am, I'm not going to let this get the best of me. I'm moving on with my life. — Joel Osteen

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. — Jessica Valenti

I'm full of self-doubt. I doubt everything I do. Everything I do is a failure. — John Banville

(I)t is simply wrong to confuse cowardice with appeasement. Cowardice is a failing of character. Appeasement is a failure of policy. Stalin appeased Hitler when he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Stalin was an evil character, to be sure. But cowardice really isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Stalin ' that word is "sexy." I'm kidding, I'm kidding. — Jonah Goldberg

I pretend I've got lots of confidence and I'm a big jock and like that but deep inside I'm a frightened, insecure, can't-make-it failure. — Beatrice Sparks

I'm all alone,
fuming at myself,
waving a great flag
of failure. — Emma Cameron

Failure to conform to social norms. I prefer to define my sociopathy as a set of traits that inform my personality but don't define me: I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions, I am strategic and canny, I am intelligent and confident and charming, but I also struggle to react appropriately to other people's confusing and emotion-driven social cues. — M.E. Thomas

I'll be living quietly in a house somewhere in the suburbs, enjoying a peaceful existence not writing the book I'm not writing now and, so as to continue not doing so, I will come up with different excuses from the ones I use now to avoid actually confronting myself. Or else I'll be interned in a poorhouse, content with my utter failure, mingling with the riffraff who believed they were geniuses when in fact they were just beggars with dreams, mixing with the anonymous mass of people who had neither the strength to triumph nor the power to turn their defeats into victories. — Fernando Pessoa

As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil. — M. Scott Peck

I want you all to know," Skulduggery said, "that we are the first line of defence. In fact, we're practically the only line of defence. If we fail, there won't be a whole lot anyone else will be able to do. What I'm trying to say is that failure at this point isn't really the smart move to make. We are not to fail, do I make myself absolutely clear? Failure is bad, it won't help us in the short term and certainly won't do us any favours in the long run, and I think I've lost track of this speech, and I'm not too sure where it's headed. But I know where it started and that's what you've got to keep in mind. Where's my hat? — Derek Landy

I'm a secular priest ordained by training, experience, and, most important, the willingness to accept the mantle of command. That willingness encompasses the realization that failure is easy, and such failure could kill me or, worse, kill someone else. — Laurence Gonzales

I knew that there was an upcoming screening where not only were we going to show it to everybody else at the studio, we also needed to move into production. And yet I was sitting there in editorial going, this is not working. I'm a failure. — Pete Docter

The truth about most people: they will never accept you as you are. You'll need to change. And I'm begging you, change. But only for yourself, and even if that means by yourself. Never bend for them. Don't calm your heart, don't scale back these dreams. Stay strange, lost your mind, finger fuck the rules, burn bridges if you must, and follow your insanity. Feel everything, it's telling you something. People will love you in bits and pieces, and hate you just the same. You'll always be too much for some, and not enough for others. They will never believe in you, as much as you do. And understand that you will never be a success in the eyes of a failure. There's a magic in you that most others can't believe in, simply because they haven't made sense of themselves. But you're magic, still. You've been that way all along. And even if the world changed everything in you, that much would always be true. — J. Raymond

I wish my prose to be transparent-I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure. — V.S. Naipaul

Failure is not an option, and I always felt like I'm a man who doesn't have regrets, and I don't live with excuses. I can't take excuses. — Nas

The other thing that's happened with writing is that I'm not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you're not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. "Be ambitious," he said, "for the work." Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway. — Marsha L. Larsen

I often hear that Gintama is very kind to losers. The thought that "a failure like me can still keep living when I read this manga." But I didn't intentionally draw losers. I've been told that it's because I'm a loser too. Well, fine. But honestly, I think everyone's a loser. The only difference is the skin we put on. Once you open the lid and look inside, everyone's the same. — Hideaki Sorachi

I never root for a failure. I learned that when we were on 'Felicity.' There was a show that failed on the lot, and suddenly all of this food showed up on our set. I was, like, 'What is this?' And they said, 'Oh, they cancelled this other show right before their lunch.' And I said, 'Throw that food away! We don't want to touch that food! There's no way I'm eating it!' So I never root for anybody, because it could happen to you in two seconds. — Greg Grunberg

Colin "I'm just
I'm just a failure. what if this is it?
andI never do anything significant and I'm just a complete waste?"
Hassan sat up, with his hands on his knees. "See, this is why you need to believe in God. — John Green

My Creed

To live as gently as I can;
To be, no matter where, a man;
To take what comes of good or ill
And cling to faith and honor still;
To do my best, and let that stand
The record of my brain and hand;
And then, should failure come to me,
Still work and hope for victory.

To have no secret place wherein
I stoop unseen to shame or sin;
To be the same when I'm alone
As when my every deed is known;
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.

To leave some simple mark behind
To keep my having lived in mind;
If enmity to aught I show,
To be an honest, generous foe,
To play my little part, nor whine
That greater honors are not mine.
This, I believe, is all I need
For my philosophy and creed. — Edgar A. Guest

all of my bases covered. You assume responsibility for violations of local, regional, global, intrasystem, interstellar, intergalactic and interdimensional law, civil, religious, or military. I'm also not responsible for loss of life and limb, property damage, domestic disputes, engineered biological human dieback, nuclear fallout, violations of causality, cascading sub-quantum misalignment, hastening of cosmic heat death, rampant AI, accelerated climate change, geomagnetic reversal, vacuum metastability events, total existence failure, gray goo scenario, red goo scenario--that's a nasty one--tectonic inversion-- — Joseph R. Lallo

IT - especially with its role so greatly enlarged by the arrival of the Internet - has changed not only how we work and conduct business, but also how we (and our customers) play, how we consume, and how we educate our next generations. And yet the IT phenomenon, so evident in the expenditures of every organization, has not yet achieved management attention equal to other areas, such as finance, marketing, operations, and human resources. In far too many companies, IT remains a black box that business managers rarely try to see inside. When business managers do engage in IT discussions, often they bring little expertise to bear. Few feel apologetic about their IT inadequacies. But the time is coming when "I'm not an IT person" will be no more adequate as a manager's defense in the aftermath of a major corporate problem than Jeff Skilling's now notorious "I'm not an accountant" - that CEOs effort to explain his failure to foresee or prevent Enron's spectacular implosion. — Robert D. Austin

I can't say I'm not grateful to have journalists writing about me as a genius. But I know it's not true. I'm not confused. I understand that success comes through a lot of failure and a lot of very embarrassing failure. People want to create the next Facebook, but they are too afraid to create the next Facemash. — Eric Ries

Bono: But you write. Why do you write?
Michka: well, because I'm unable to express things in another way. I often believe that the words that come out of my mouth are not the ones I should be using. I can't cut things loose unless I'm really sure about them.
It's good, but sometimes it's an excuse.
Bono: That's often an excuse. You have to dare to fail. I think that's the big one: fear of failure. I've never had a fear of failure. Isn't that mad?
Michka: that's the maddest thing, but at the same time I think that's the secret. Because you've never been afraid of making a fool of yourself, you've never been afraid of looking ridiculous. — Michka Assayas

When a child makes a mistake or fails to accomplish a certain goal, we must avoid any word or action which indicates that we consider him a failure. 'Too bad that didn't work.' 'I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.' We need to separate the deed from the doer. — Rudolf Dreikurs

I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don't know if I'm the monarch of all I survey. — Sylvester Stallone

I feel at home in intimate concert halls. I can take risks and I'm immediately forgiven if the risk is a failure because it's such a cozy atmosphere. It opens up the opportunity for conversation and for interacting with the crowd. — Jason Mraz

I feel guilty sometimes. It may be that innate English nature - the need to think that you must've done something wrong if you're a success. It's sometimes better if you can say: 'Okay, I'm a failure; now will you be my friend?'. — Emily Lloyd

I should mention that all of the above explorers were unqualified failures. Not coincidentally, they were also all British. Americans admire success. Englishman admire heroic failure. Given a choice
at least in my reading
I'm un-American enough to take quixotry over efficiency any day. — Anne Fadiman

If we can change from that deeper place - for instance, if I am constantly going around telling myself and everybody that I'm a failure and I'm worthless, that's a reflection of the thoughts I'm having. The moment that I'm able to shift at the level of my mind and start seeing that I have something to offer, life is important, and I want to contribute, then that tiny subtle shift from the inside can have a profound affect on my external life. — MC Yogi

A lack of fear of embarrassment is what allows one to be proactive. It's what makes a person take on challenges that others write off as too risky. It's what makes you take the first step before you know what the second step is. I'm not a fan of physical risks, but if you can't handle the risk of embarrassment, rejection, and failure, you need to learn how, and studies suggest that is indeed a learnable skill.1 As — Scott Adams

We are all victims of what is done to us. We can either use that as an excuse for failure, knowing that if we fail it isn't really our fault, or we can say, 'I want something better than that, I deserve something better than that, and i'm going to try to make myself a life worth living. — Howard Dully

The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god - that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them - and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species. That's the source of my indignations, my dissatisfactions, however it comes out on the stage. I feel betrayed by the people I'm part of, these creatures, these magnificent creatures. — George Carlin

We cheated, you and me, and someone noticed. I noticed you; someone else noticed me. It hurts us. That's not so bad. So many people cheat. Everywhere on every level. Everyone's cheated. I'm just saying that you don't need to see yourself as a cheater. Because that's not who you are. You're someone who cheated. There's a difference, and you should try to get that difference, or that's who you'll grow up to be. — Anne Lamott

Every time. You know why? I want to fail. I work like a dog for twenty years so I'll have the supreme pleasure of failing. Never knew anybody like that, did you? I'm very cunning. I plan it in advance. I fool myself right up to the last minute, and then the time comes and I know how cunningly I've been planning it all the time. I've been a failure all my life. — Wallace Stegner

It's not my fault if I'm not any good at things like that." "I'll differ there," Coker told her. "It's not only your fault - it's a self-created fault. Moreover, it's an affectation to consider yourself too spiritual to understand anything mechanical. It is a petty and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him - and even her - brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to be praised; — John Wyndham

I don't think something is a failure if you put your all into it. I'm a big fan of the saying, "Nothing beats a failure but a try." — Regina King

This need to be right has put a huge burden on me, one that I never deserved to have to carry. Part of it, I know, is cultural
in this age of information at a moment's notice, we've come to expect people to have answers
the right answers
at the drop of a hat. I feel very fortunate that over the last decade or so I've been able to leave the need to be right behind me and move on with my life with a more healthy perspective. I'm now willing not just to admit that I'm wrong, but also to stick my neck out with ideas or thoughts that may be wrong. The possibility of being wrong no longer threatens my emotional well-being; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I learn from that. — Tom Walsh

Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story. — Kevin Smith

Failure is information-we label it failure, but it's more like, 'This didn't work, I'm a problem solver, and I'll try something else.' — Carol S. Dweck

If I'm not playing well, I do get down on myself because I am a perfectionist. [So I need] someone who believes in me more than I believe in me, someone willing to work as hard as I work. I don't understand what no means or what failure means; I only understand what yes means and try again means. — Serena Williams

Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I'm thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much." "True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed," said Mrs. Allan, "and we should have a very high ideal of it , and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that had nothing of real friendship in it. — L.M. Montgomery

My New Year's Eve is always 2 July, the night before my birthday. That's the night I make my resolutions. And this year scares the life out of me, because no matter how successful, how good things appear, there is always a deep core of failure within me, although I am trying to deal with it. My biggest fear, this coming year, is that I will be waking up alone.
It makes me wonder how many bodies will be fished out of the Thames, how many decaying corpses will be found in one-room flats.
I'm just being realistic. — Tracey Emin

Failure is a mindset, not a circumstance. I let my experiences strengthen me. You think I fell on my face, but I'm down here doing pushups. — Steve Maraboli

So after that I had a new rule. If I'm hired by the plant engineer, I only go over his head if I'm in project failure mode. If the project is going to fail, then I'll go over his head. But as long as the project is going to come out, I never go over his head. Now, that's a rule I still follow today. — Robert Greene

Yes, being gay is just one of a thousand traits that make up my character, no more remarkable than my love of M&M's or my ability to mess up a room in fifteen seconds flat or my failure to understand the appeal of Luke and Owen Wilson.
But I believe that the desire to love and be loved is the strongest force on earth. And in that way, being gay affects every interaction in which straight people take part. Every human motive is in the end a yearning for companionship, and every act of every person on this planet is an effort not to be alone. — Joel Derfner

I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things. — Peter Morgan

WINTER SPOILER KINDA
Cinder stared at his whitened knuckles and struggled for something meaningful to say. Her grand plan of revolution and change had just begun and already she felt like a failure. This seemed worse than failing the people of Luna, though. She'd failed the people she cared about most in the universe.
Finally, she whispered, "I'm so sorry, Thorne."
"Yeah," he said. "Me too. — Marissa Meyer

I'm afraid of committing myself," she thought to herself.

"When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way."

"Don't bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions."

"But how will I know who my Soulmate is?" Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life.
"By taking risks" she said to Brida. ' By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in you search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end."

Nothing is completely wrong. Even a broken watch is right twice a day. — Paulo Coelho

I'm as vulnerable as anybody to the toxicity of the American nuclear family. But I wouldn't call it disease or moral failure as much as I would point the finger at a system that grinds people down like a metal file. Who doesn't need a drink? Who isn't going to crack and lash out at the people they love? — Susie Bright

I'm afraid of everything. Fear of being alone, fear of being hurt, fear of being made a fool of, fear of failure ... Still, I think all my fears bleed from one big one ... — Tiffanie DeBartolo

You have to fail, man, but you cannot allow failure to stop you from doing what you must do. Failing is just as good as succeeding in a lot of ways. It's how you react to it all. You can react to success the wrong way and be a total failure. Or you can react to losing with your whole heart, learn from it, and be a huge success. In stand-up, I've learned to know when I'm burning it up or when I'm being so-so. That's experience. I learn every single time I'm on a stage. — J. B. Smoove

I'm going to have to start you off easy. Can't pull out the big guns on the first night. I'd just set myself up for failure on the second date."
Putting her hands on her hips, she tilted her head. "Is that what you did last night in bed? I thought you were holding out on me."
"What the hell, Ash!"
She burst out laughing.
"That is not what you are supposed to tell a man! Repeat after me: I ruined you for all men, all the while fulfilling your every fantasy. — Aly Martinez

I'm a perfectly equipped failure. — Azar Nafisi

I don't know if it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I'm not going to be writing about Paris in the 1800s. I feel like it would come off as just ludicrously uninformed, even if I did a lot of research. — Maria Semple

Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental commentary, such as: "Everything always goes wrong", "I won't be accepted", "I'm a failure" or "What's the point?" Those fears were deep-rooted and triggered many upsetting addictive patterns of behaviour — Christopher Dines

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved-that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure. — Stanley Kubrick

I'm so not interesting in having to try and make something out of foil."
What, you didn't like the poncho with wraparound leggings?"
It was beyond hideou- wait a minute. You watch that show?"
My mom loves it."
But your suppose to be sulking in the basement getting ready to light fires."
What can I say? I'm a failure as a teenager. I watch TV with my mom. — Elizabeth Scott

Is my socialism a religious faith? That's a longstanding critique, most famously expressed in The God That Failed, a book written by disillusioned former Communist Party supporters after World War II. I'm not sure why socialism was the only god singled out by the authors for failure. What grade did the regular God get in the wake of the Nazis and the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a C+? — Danny Katch

When I see a kid in a movie theater texting, I think it's a failure of the movie. It's not a triumph of the Apple iPhone. It's a failure of Warner Bros. and Sony, and all that, because they haven't kept their attention and challenged them. They're smart little kids that are bored, and I wanted to challenge them. — Joseph M. Kahn

If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.. if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got. — Harper Lee

You cannot achieve success without the risk of failure. And I learned a long time ago, you cannot achieve success, if you fear failure. If you're not afraid to fail, man, you have a chance to succeed. But you're never gonna get there unless you risk it, all the way. I'll risk failure. Sometimes, half the fun is failing. Learning from your mistakes, waking up the next morning, and saying 'Okay. Watch out. Here I come again. A little bit smarter, licking my wounds, and really not looking forward to getting my ass kicked the way I just did yesterday.' So now, I'm just a little more dangerous. — Paul Heyman

It's tough, acting. You have to walk two lines of a tightrope. There's the all-consuming fear of failure: I'm about to fall flat on my face. There's that and there's also confidence - you have to be confident in order to try things - and they fight each other all the time. — Jessica Chastain

I'm not really equipped to do anything else but making movies. In every other aspect of my life I'm a total failure. — Michael Pitt

I always try to remember that I am a work in progress. When I maintain that perspective, I realize that I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to have it all together. I don't need to try to have all the answers. And I don't need to learn everything in a day. When I make a mistake, it's not because I'm a failure or worthless. I just didn't do something right because I still haven't improved enough in some part of the process. And that motivates me to keep growing and improving. If I don't know something, it's an opportunity to try to improve in a new area. — John C. Maxwell

I give it a fifty-fifty chance of total failure. If Kai refuses to repay a debt he legitimately owes, he'll be dishonoured in front of his entire Flight. Thunderbirds always avenge their dead, honour their word, and pay their debts. Those seem to be the only laws they have." Based on what little time I'd spent with them.
Marc frowned. "It's the 'legitimately owes' part that worries me."
"Thus the fifty-fifty shot of failure." I stared up at the nest, watching for any sign of activity. "It all depends on whether or not I'm able to bullshit him into thinking he owes us."
"The odds are always in your favour when bullshit's involved." Jace grinned, and I couldn't help returning his smile. — Rachel Vincent

I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel! — Gustave Flaubert

Again I insist upon the point. The whole of the sexual revolution has been a colossal failure, and has wrought untold human misery. The move for same-sex pseudogamy is inextricable from that revolution; it is grafted upon it and cannot survive or even appear to make sense without it. We cannot have a good nation unless we are a good people. We cannot be a good people when we throw contempt upon manhood and womanhood and the virtue that honors their beauty and their being for one another; it is like asking for clean sleaze, or cold love. — Anthony M. Esolen

Don't misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I'm talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what's going on. — N. T. Wright

One thing I do believe is I'm a believer in the presence of God. I believe that God is close. Whether it's in joy, pain or personal failure, I believe that God is close. That much I feel in my life. — David Gregory

I have always been considered a bit of an outsider, and a general failure at everything I put my hand towards. In fact, you might even go so far as to say that I'm a lesser being of great insignificance! I state this because, when writing a story, you should always start the first line off with at least one basic truth.
-First lines from the novel Sukiyaki — Andrew James Pritchard

I don't think anybody should do what they do in hopes of being successful. But I always expect myself to be successful at things. And if I'm not, I feel bad. I don't care for failure. I've failed at a number of things, and it's not my favorite state of mind. So I prefer success. — Michael Feldman

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure. — Andrew Vachss

Success is no mystery, but simply the result of consistently applying some basic principles. The reverse is just as true: Failure is simply a result of making a few mistakes repeatedly. All of this might sound too simplistic, but the fact is that most truths are very simple. I'm not saying they are easy, but they certainly are simple. — Shiv Khera

A joke is a way to say, 'I'm going to do something funny now. If I don't get a laugh at the end, I'm a failure.' — Penn Jillette

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best. — George Eliot

Fail, it's not in my dictionary. I've got a good dictionary up there and the words 'fail' and 'failure' have been ruled out for years. I don't know what people are talking about who use that word. All I do know is temporary non-success, even if I've got to wait another 20 years for what I'm after, and I try to put that into people, no matter what their object in life. — Percy Cerutty

I'm kind of a failure. I mean, I'll be honest. I'm successful in that I'm getting to work on great stuff, but I think I'm a failure in all the personal stuff that is most important to me. — Paul Feig

I'm interested in stories which insist on a dog fails-to-eat-dog kind of world. I hate misanthropy, want to believe that there's a possibility that we might all be redeemed, that hope deferred makes the soul sick, that our humanity is fragile, funny, common, crazy, full of the longing for love, the failure of love. — Anthony Minghella

Now I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips - whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital with all the jobs that they killed, I'm sure he was worried that he'd run out of pink slips. There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business and I happen to think that's indefensible. If you're a victim of Bain Capital's downsizing, it's the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it. — Rick Perry

The only private language I know is self-exaggeration. I think I've grown a second self in this room. It's the self-important fool that keeps the writer going. I exaggerate the pain of writing, the pain of solitude, the failure, the rage, the confusion, the helplessness, the fear, the humiliation. The narrower the boundaries of my life, the more I exaggerate myself. If the pain is real, why do I inflate it? Maybe this is the only pleasure I'm allowed. — Don DeLillo

No matter what I attempt, even if it's the most simple of tasks, it always ends in failure. Unfortunately, I find that my life is one big regret after another. Yet, after all these years, I still don't know when to give up. Is it my fault to keep trying when the results are always the same? Is it impossible for me to make things right? Even if I'd try to give up, I don't think I could. It's not in my nature to sumbit in the face of disappointment. In the end, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. I really am an idiot ... — Katsura Hoshino

Do you have difficulty sleeping?"
"Sometimes not. When I do it's bad, though. I lie there thinking about how everything I've done is a failure, death and failure, and there's no hope for me except being homeless, because I'm never going to be able to hold a job because everyone else is so much smarter. — Ned Vizzini

I'm neither professional fighter nor physicist, therefore on some level I will always consider myself a failure. — Dov Davidoff

Unbelief loves to paint the bleakest picture it can. It loves to get us mumbling to ourselves, I'm not going to make it. I just know this is going to turn out terrible. The future is bound to crash on me.
Let me tell you that God, who began a good work in you, is not about to stop now. After sending his Son to die for your sins, after saving you at such incredible cost, why would he let you fail now? — Jim Cymbala

The central miscalculation of the Religious Right has been its failure to recognize the real nature of the battle, how long it's been waged, and the high price we've been willing to pay for entry into the political theater. I write as an evangelical Christian who once believed that America is a Christian nation that lost its way. I'm still an evangelical Christian, but I no longer believe that this nation, or any nation in this fallen world, can truly be 'under God. — Michael Babcock

I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I'm psyched. — Jonah Hill

I won but I wasn't like Pat. Because - and why this should be I'll never know - I never did a thing that wasn't somehow touched with selfish, furtive hunger, with a private, annihilating need for recognition. Because I'm like a child in a fairy tale cursed from birth, and there has never been anything I can put my hand to without tainting it, no triumph so great or solemn that it doesn't turn spoiled and ridiculous. Because, sooner or later, the darkness always gets in. — Austin Grossman

I was brought up to believe that there is no such thing as failure as long as I'm trying my best. So I've had a 'blood, guts and glory' approach through my whole life. — Ali Larter