Rejections Quotes & Sayings

As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors who said he had no talent. One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small rodent-infested shed near the church. Seeing a small mouse inspired him to draw a new cartoon. That was the start of Mickey Mouse. — Shiv Khera

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Oh these little rejections how they add up quickly, one small sideways look and I feel so ungood. Somewhere along the way I think I gave you the power to make me feel the way I thought only my father could. — Alanis Morissette

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it. — George Bernard Shaw

But on the extremist side I didn't get any rejections at all. Everyone agreed to talk to me. — Jon Ronson

Persistence is a unique mental strength; a strength that is essential to combat the fierce power of the repeated rejections and numerous other obstacles that sit in waiting and are all part of winning in a fast-moving, ever-changing world. — Bob Proctor

Our judgment and moral categories, our idea of the future, our opinions about the present or about justice, peace, or war, everything, without excluding our rejections of Marxism, is impregnated with Marxism. — Octavio Paz

I've had way more rejections than I've had jobs. — Matthew Morrison

Have so many merry little pots bubbling away in the fire of my enthusiasm: Myron, future trips, modern poetry, Yeats, Sitwell, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, villanelles, maybe Mlle, maybe The New Yorker or The Atlantic (poems sent out make blind hope spring eternal - even if rejections are immanent), spring: biking, breathing, sunning, tanning. All so lovely and potential. — Sylvia Plath

One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non-sales selling isn't natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections. — Daniel H. Pink

Don't ever let rejections or failures put you down and keep you from trying. Believe in yourself, have an unwavering desire to excel, put in your best your efforts, persevere and you will blaze your trail. — Roopleen

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage. — Octavia Butler

All the Hardships. All the Mistakes. All the Rejections. All the Pain. All the times you Questioned why. All of these things have given Birth to the Wisdom and Strength that will Help you Shine your Light on the World, Even in the darkest of Hours. — Judith Orloff

I have friends that are much better actors than I am that had to quit the business because they couldn't survive the auditions or the rejections, or people just didn't realize how good they were. — Robert Englund

Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma if you're right. And if you're really lucky, you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation. — Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way. — Jon Acuff

Acceptance is like an antibiotic that prevents past rejections from turning into present-day infections. The need for belonging runs deep. — Lysa TerKeurst

If rejections were cash, I'd be rich — Buffy Andrews

The real essence of your distinctive footprints may least be felt in your presence and much more in your absence — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There was a danger that skeptics and opponents would misread those likelihood ratio tests as rejections of an entire class of models, which of course they were not. — Thomas J. Sargent

You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft - then you can add all the genius you like. — Phyllis A. Whitney

The word 'NO' is the best motivation there is for the storyteller in you. — A.K. Kuykendall

Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood. — Samuel Johnson

All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances. — Mahatma Gandhi

I knew that if I wanted to stop being a pushover I had to get comfortable with small rejections myself. That took some work, but because of it I can now say 'no' to other people with a clear conscience. — Beth Ditto

Save your rejections so that later when you are famous you can show them to people and laugh. — Meg Cabot

I feel like it has gone very fast for me, but I feel like it wasn't instantaneous, at all. I was getting a lot of rejections. I just got very lucky and it happened quickly for me. I don't feel like I'm a prodigy or something. — Anthony Doerr

The usual way - through a long series of rejections, revising my manuscripts, and kept trying again and again. Finally I was fortunate enough to find a good agent. — Danielle Steel

Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Rejections are thin 'cause they really have nothing to say other than, "Sorry, dude, you're screwed." acceptances are thick 'cause they have lots of stuff to say like, "Welcome, dude, you're not screwed, we want you. — Alan Sitomer

They were readers for whom literature was a drug, each complex plot line delivering a new high, suspending them above reality, allowing them a magical crossover ... They had spoken often, with rueful honesty, of how the books they read represented escape, offered pathways to literary landscapes that intrigued and engrossed ... From childhood on, books had been the hot air balloons that carried them above the angry mutterings of quarreling parents, schoolyard rejections, academic boredom ... They were of a kind, readers from birth. — Gloria Goldreich

Keep reading and writing, learn how to revise, and push through rejections. My second book, Monsoon Summer, was rejected over 20 times and finally came out 11 years after my first book! I'm glad I didn't give up. Neither should you. — Mitali Perkins

I think all great innovations are built on rejections. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper's (no less! - and I hardly can believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen. And cooks haddock & sausage. Bless her. I feel my life linked to her, somehow. I love her. — Sylvia Plath

Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush's dog getting a book deal. — Timothy Egan

I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown. — Stephenie Meyer

I couldn't tell you the ratio, but probably for every job you see me do, there would be 20 rejections. — Noel Clarke

Many days you will want to give up because of rejections and failures. Passion to be an artist will help you prevail where others fail. — Jack White

Being a writer means expressing with passion your imagination, nightmares, dreams, experiences and reality through words on paper. You are a successful writer when readers criticize, get emotionally affected by, and praise your written work. As a writer, rejections are paths to success. Being prepared for it is like wearing a powerful armor in battles unknown. Continue to write. It is a writer's mighty shield and weapon. — Sonnia Kemmer

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying. — Anita Diament

So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape ( ... ) — Oscar Wilde

Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. The absurd man can only drain everything to the bitter end, and deplete himself. The absurd is his extreme tension, which he maintains constantly by solitary effort, for he knows that in that consciousness and in that day-to-day revolt he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance. — Albert Camus

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, To hell with you. — Saul Bellow

Our lives are a little like a milkshake. Ingredients get mixed together. Some of the ingredients are unimpressive by themselves. Some - rejections, disappointments, failures - are awful at the time. Yet God shakes them up and pours them out into a concoction that is delicious and good. — Max Lucado

Usually pilot season is very busy, and there are lots of auditions and lots of near misses and rejections. This year, I had two auditions, landed this role and it felt like being home again. — Melinda Clarke

Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not "accepted" at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance. — Robert Henri

The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, born with a precocious scientific intellect and a thirst for chemical knowledge, Elion had completed a master's degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 while teaching high school science during the day and preforming her research for her thesis at night and on the weekends. Although highly qualified, talented, and driven, she had been unable to find a job in an academic laboratory. Frustrated by repeated rejections, she had found a position as a supermarket product supervisor. When Hitchings found Trudy Elion, who would soon become on of the most innovative synthetic chemists of her generation (and a future Nobel laureate), she was working for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. Rescued from a life of pickles and mayonnaise ... — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken — Agatha Christie

People with a realistic view see rejections as a natural part of life and adjust accordingly. It — Lysa TerKeurst

At this point in my career, I don't have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things. My children can make me feel rejected. They can humble you pretty quick. — Al Pacino

He is jealous for you. He is jealous for me. The fullness of His love and lavish acceptance is the only match for the rejections we will experience. And He absolutely doesn't want us making other relationships the false gods of our worship. As we seek love and acceptance, God doesn't want us to test Him; He wants us to trust Him. — Lysa TerKeurst

If you want to write a novel, be relentlessly relentless. Get ready for re-writes and rejections. But when you finally hold that book in your hand, well...get ready to rejoice! — Brigitte Quinn

Youth makes you brave, I suppose. When you're young, you make a fool of yourself all the time. Because of all the rejections and the criticism you get all the time, there has to be a drive there. — Shirley Henderson

The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shame does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. Indifferent to approval, reputation, wealth, or love, he cherishes only his personal sense of honor, which he permits no one else to judge.[ ... ] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejections, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death. — William Manchester

You are not what you have done, but what you have overcome. All the hardships, the mistakes, the rejections, the pain and all the times you questioned why have given birth to the wisdom and strength that will help you shine your light on the world, even in the darkest of hour. Failures and struggles keep you humble. Success and achievement keep you glowing, but only faith and determination keep you going. Stay focused and celebrate your efforts too, not just the outcomes. — John Geiger

they that reject and disregard the unripe fruits are they that enjoy the ripe fruits — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Obama wants to stand for a peaceful, generous, encompassing approach that would bring all Americans, but not just Americans, the whole of international society, together to advance civilization towards what we all understand is necessary to advance. Because of that he's being subjected to very serious rejections from the reactionary portion of the system, which, unfortunately, is the dominant portion. — Gilberto Gil

I include myself in the posters because I feel like it forms a more intimate relationship between the artist and the person passing by. And it's important to include some vulnerability and use fears and rejections and various aspects from my own life so people look at my work as more than greeting card fodder. — Morley

I've grown up seeing the pros and cons but I love it and I've always wanted to act. Throughout all the rejections at auditions, and especially when I finally did get something, both my parents have been so supportive and always told me it is all about passion and, if I was doing it because I love it, there's no wrong choice. — Lily Collins

I need work. I still audition for work. I don't get offered things out of nowhere. I have to work hard, still, and I get a lot of rejections. It just goes on and on. — Bojana Novakovic

REJECTION MINIMIZATION THEOREM (RMT):
Think about it: boys basically, want to kiss girls. Guys want to make out. Always. Hassan aside, there's a rarely a time when a boy is thinking, Eh, I think I'd rather not kiss a girl today. — John Green

I still get rejections - frequently - and my goal isn't to never fail, to never be turned down, but simply to succeed more often than I don't. And in order to do that, I have to constantly put myself out there, to judgment, critique, and rejection. — V.E Schwab

It wasn't just heartbreaking but it broke my identity! All that anguish that was deep hidden in me because rejections from family and friends started to pour out like a current in the sea that would seem destructive. — Santosh Avvannavar

Everything good takes a great amount of effort. Like, things went wrong with 'Prozac Nation' so much, and it went through so many rejections and incarnations, but I felt so much that it needed to exist. But if I hadn't been so persistent and insistent, it wouldn't have happened. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I quickly learned that if I kept at it and plowed right through the rejections I would eventually get somebody to buy my wares. — Charles R. Schwab

Had Martha Foley returned William [James Sidis]'s passion as Margaret [Engemann] did Norbert [Wiener]'s, perhaps the two prodigies would have had more in common in the long run. ... In the life of a prodigy, perhaps more than in the average life, a marriage or a requited love is the greatest single factor that can heal the old childhood wounds. William and Norbert's response to their childhood and teenage rejections and humiliations was to retreat into the painless world of ideas, where successes and satisfactions abounded. A successful love affair could be the key to reentry into the world of feeling, bridging the gap between the cerebral and the emotional lives. — Amy Wallace

In our marriage it was our practice not to share anything that was upsetting, depressing, demoralizing, tedious - unless it was unavoidable. Because so much in a writer's life can be distressing - negative reviews, rejections by magazines, difficulties with editors, publishers, book designers - disappointment with one's own work, on a daily/hourly basis! - it seemed to me a very good idea to shield Ray from this side of my life as much as I could. For what is the purpose of sharing your misery with another person, except to make that person miserable, too? — Joyce Carol Oates

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
but what I reject is more numerous,
denser, more demanding than before.
A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable loss. — Wislawa Szymborska

I think I am at that stage of Life now where Success or Failure, nothing Bothers me. If I get little success then I get lots of rejections and failures on a regular basis too. But none of that bothers me at all. I can take failure as sportingly without getting bothered as I take success. And this is how my life has drastically changed in last one year or something. I don't do things anymore to please people around me and all I care about is If I am happy being where I am and I am enjoying doing what I am doing or not. I may not be where I want to be yet but I am Happy.This is what matters in Life. Isn't it? Find what you love. Sooner or Later but you need to find one day, and once you find, give your everything to it. There may be many failures and rejections on the way but you will reach where you want to be some day and most importantly, you will be happy and in Peace with where you are. — Shivam Singh

One might be tempted to think that the many slights and rejections we scientists must suffer are somehow a necessary part of our education. But I don't think that way anymore. My experience with the music business has taught me to cherish every bit of feedback I can get, and not to think of the hundreds of unreturned phone calls or ignored pitches I must face as signs of personal failings. It was this change of perspective,
and the pressure it removed from my life, that first made me want to try systematically applying what I learned in the music business to the world of science. — Marc J. Kuchner

When I got out of high school, I wanted to be an actor but was getting a lot of rejections. I was getting rejected by life. My mother, God rest her soul, told me not to quit. — Don Rickles

As a journalist, you sort of grind away, taking rejections as they come, building on whatever advances you've achieved. — Robert Draper

It's not easy. I got lots of rejections when I first started out. If you want to write, you have to believe in yourself and not give up. You have to do your best to practice and get better. — Rick Riordan

Advice? Fail constantly. Because the word doesn't mean what you think it means, especially when you're an artist. I use the word artist to mean everything from songwriting to writing a novel to even writing video games. Anything that tells a story, which is almost any medium. Gotta take risks, you gotta go through multiple drafts which means you have to FAIL, a lot. So you won't always get the reaction you always want from every single person, so when you lose that fear of failure, when you stop even thinking of it as failure, and you push yourself farther, you'll take bigger risks, and eventually, after about six or seven hundred rejections, you'll find success. And you'll find a way of conveying what you really want to say, in the best manner. — Victor Giannini

Most writers, including myself, had to endure a lot of rejections before finally getting published. You could wallpaper a sizeable bathroom with the rejection slips I have received. Don't ever give up! — Jonathan Weeks

Audrey was a princess, so natural, the camera really loved her ... James and I kept each other company during all the rejections. We used to meet, have a cup of coffee and went from office to office to get work and never got work. — Ben Gazzara

In 2011, I did an internship in Seven Dials, a junction in London where seven roads come together. I'd given up on writing after multiple rejections for my first novel, and I was starting to consider a career in publishing instead, but Seven Dials gave me such a strong idea for a setting that I couldn't resist picking up my pen again. — Samantha Shannon

I'm discovering there are innumerable ways to package, promote and sell my humor, as long as I reserve a little for myself to keep bouncing back and laughing off the rejections that are also part of the art of cartooning. — Mark Evelyn Heath

Every event in life - the rejections, the relationships, all the embarrassing things you do will lead you to the person you are destined to be with. You may want to change certain things about your past, but everything has been just another chapter in your book of life. If you don't believe me, buy a book - any book - and rip out an entire chapter - any chapter - and read it. Now, get a full copy of the same book and read it again. Odds are you'll find that chapter pieced everything together the way it was supposed to be. — Mike Zacchio

Prayer sustains us through the storms and rejections. — Euginia Herlihy

Believing in yourself means more than simply believing in your own ultimate success; it means believing you will survive failures, disappointments, rejections, and criticism but still persist. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Growing up in a family of actors, what's great about it is that they're very supportive and they understand what it's like to be an actor - the rejections, the highs and lows ... and having a common language with them is great because you have shorthand speech. — Chris Pine

Henri Nouwen wrote of the spiritual work of gratitude: To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives - the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections - that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.2 — Brennan Manning

These rejections hurt me terribly because I felt it was my life that was being rejected. — Edmund White

Learn from your rejections and polish your craft. Write for the sheer joy of being creative. — Jonathan Weeks

Your success as a writer will probably not depend on how well you write so much as in how you handle rejections. — Gilbert Morris

I was absorbing a sorry truth of show business - rejection is the norm and acceptance the oddity. I was learning to cut the tops off my highs and stay with the lows where the rejections and letdowns would be shallow. — Joan Rivers

Don't over edit. Don't second-guess yourself, or your ideas. Just write. Write every day, and keep at it. Don't get discouraged with the rejections. Tape them up on your office wall, to remind you of all the hard work you put in when you finally start getting published! It's all about persistence and passion. And have fun with it. Don't forget to have fun. — Heather Grace Stewart

If you are going to be a writer, you have to have self-belief, every writer gets rejections, they say the difference between a successful and unsuccessful writer is an unsuccessful writer gives up, if you keep going you will succeed. — Anthony Horowitz