Quotes & Sayings About Succeeding

Sometimes the difference between success and failure is simply the degree to which you crave one over the other. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Shonda, how do you do it all?
The answer is this: I don't.
Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life....
That is the trade-off.
That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. — Shonda Rhimes

I regard (parenting) as the hardest, most complicated, anxiety-ridden, sweat-and-blood-producing job in the world. Succeeding requires the ultimate in patience, common sense, commitment, humor, tact, love, wisdom, awareness, and knowledge. At the same time, it holds the possibility for the most rewarding, joyous experience of a lifetime, namely, that of being successful guides to a new and unique human being. — Virginia Satir

If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. — Robert M. Pirsig

By strengthening the three pillars of the United Nations - security, development and human rights - we can build a more peaceful, more prosperous and more just world for our succeeding generations. — Ban Ki-moon

Getting fired can produce a particularly bountiful payday for a CEO. Indeed, he can 'earn' more in that single day, while cleaning out his desk, than an American worker earns in a lifetime of cleaning toilets. Forget the old maxim about nothing succeeding like success: Today, in the executive suite, the all-too-prevalent rule is that nothing succeeds like failure. — Warren Buffett

There is, I am sensible, an age at which every individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered, as the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of you contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the misfortune of succeeding you. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The images of mens wits and knowledge remain in books. They generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages — Francis Bacon

I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free. — Theresa May

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes. — Henry David Thoreau

The vision, determination, stamina, hope, relentlessness, and sheer work that are involved in staying afloat, much less succeeding, are the same whether you are running a window on 47th Street or Miramax Films or Microsoft. — Bob Weinstein

My parents - my mother, particularly - were very focused on our succeeding. I loved my parents, and was very grateful to them for everything, and I didn't want to disappoint them. — Chang-rae Lee

Most teenage suicide attempts are cries for help; the teens survive, succeeding in bringing them the wanted attention. Mine was not a cry for help. I wanted to end my life and my misery. — Sharon E. Rainey

The power behind taking responsibility for your actions lies in putting an end to negative thought patterns. You no longer dwell on what went wrong or focus on whom you are going to blame. You don't waste time building roadblocks to your success. Instead, you are set free and can now focus on succeeding. — Lorii Myers

God has put us on earth to love our neighbors and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding. — E. M. Forster

A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent. — E.F. Schumacher

This is the moral challenge of our generation. Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future. — Ban Ki-moon

When young, we're anxious - understandably - to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you - in particular you, of this generation - may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ...
And this is actually O.K. If we're going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously - as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended. — George Saunders

Like children, we have dreamt, that what gratifies our desires, or contributes to our convenience to-day, will prove equally useful and satisfactory to-morrow, without reflecting on the growth of the body, the change of humours, the new objects, and the new situations, which every succeeding hour brings in its train. — Mary Hays

I'm missing my baby's first swim lesson. If I am at my daughter's debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh's last scene ever being filmed at Grey's Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the trade-off. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing. And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want that example set for them. — Shonda Rhimes

Man is that which has still much before it. He is repeatedly transformed in his work and by it. [...] The authentic in man and in the world is potential, waiting, living in fear of being frustrated, living in hope of succeeding. — Ernst Bloch

The worst way to fire somebody is to let it drag out. It's not good for that person because they're not succeeding in their role. And it's not good for the organization because it's just not working. — Nick Woodman

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly, Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In — Charles Darwin

I am a believer in people succeeding on merit. — Nicola Sturgeon

My greatest sense of accomplishment has come from having two amazing sons, but it's also a paradox in that the times when I felt like the biggest failure have been times when I felt like, as a parent, I wasn't making the right decisions or succeeding in the way that I should. — Michael Franti

It's not about 'succeeding,' but sometimes on a film, you know you've captured something. — Tahar Rahim

If you lie down in a village square hoping to capture a sea gull, you could stay there your whole life without succeeding. But a hundred miles from shore it's different. Sea gulls have a highly developed instinct for self-preservation on land but at sea they're very cocky. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

So while the past is always implicit in the present, interpretation of the past varies with succeeding generations. The present meanings of the past evolve to reflect the concerns of each living generation. Thus although the meanings of specific events of the past may have had one set of meanings for the generation in the decades after the American Revolution, those same events may have very different meanings now. — Robert R. Archibald

The institutions founded 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians. — George Monbiot

We did very badly and almost did not do at all. Flesh poor flesh failed us ... Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx
my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me
we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!). — Walker Percy

Which is why you need the tiniest bit of bravery. People get scared when you try to do something, especially when it looks like you're succeeding. People do not get scared when you're failing. It calms them. — Mindy Kaling

I have fallen in love with writing, unknowingly. Instead of thinking whether people will like what I write or not, I decide to write only for one person- myself! I told myself that 'I as an author is going to entertain I as an audience.' And everything changed that day!

When you find your passion, don't succumb to the pressure of succeeding.Follow your passion just for yourself and for the sheer joy of it. You will see amazing things will follow- that's a guarantee. — Vishwas Mudagal

My criteria when looking for a role is that I will do anything that stands the chance of succeeding on the level it is intended to. After that, if it's a part I can do something personal with. — John Hurt

My picture, Fifth Avenue, Winter is the result of a three hours' stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd 1893, awaiting the proper moment. My patience was duly rewarded. Of course, the result contained an element of chance, as I might have stood there for hours without succeeding in getting the desired pictures. — Alfred Stieglitz

Our greatest fear is fear of success. When we are succeeding - that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level - that's when panic strikes. — Steven Pressfield

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions. — David Mamet

Watching, waiting and anticipating will only detract from visualising, persisting and succeeding' (1996) — Kieran Revell

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead. — Christopher Hitchens

Being right is one more good reason for not succeeding — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Succeeding in business and failing at home is a cop-out. For no success in the workplace will ever make up for failure at home. — Howard G. Hendricks

Heroin makes you sick the first try. Cigarette smoking too if you're lucky. But if you're not lucky, and you develop a taste, if you're one who senses that cocaine gets better with time, or you're one who jumps out of a plane and becomes an adrenaline junky, or you're one who loves the feel of grease melting over your tongue in the form of pecan pie or thick clam chowder or a fat porterhouse or just plain ol' Doritos by the bagful, and you want to repeat the same comfort and recognizable surprise of that first go, that first indulgence, and yet with each succeeding bite the small hope of true satisfaction slides farther away, then you understand Celeste, at least a little. — Amanda Boyden

It's hard to answer a question you haven't been asked. It's hard to show you tried unless you end up succeeding. — David Levithan

Oh how will crime engender crime! throw guilt
Upon the soul, and like a stone cast on
The troubled waters of a lake,
'Twill form in circles round succeeding round;
Each wider than the first. — George Colman The Elder

A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes. — Jacobus Henricus Van 't Hoff

As a believer, I know that Jesus Christ has a plan and it's not going to be my plan. It's not always succeeding and looking back it's amazing looking back to see how God works in mysterious ways, not always good ways, rough ways but those rough times, those rough patches, and those swamps and all those things that I went through are looking back, were such an incredible life lessons for me not only to shape and build me as an athlete but most importantly, my character as a person. — Jennie Finch

Success and suffering are vitally and organically linked. If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone suffered for you; if you suffer without succeeding, it is in order that someone else may succeed after you. — Edward Judson

If you don't believe in your product, or if you're not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the wherewithal to do what it takes to make your product work. — Jay Conrad Levinson

If you want to build a startup that has a good chance of succeeding, don't listen to me. Listen to Paul Graham and others who are applying tons of data to the idea of startup success. That will maximize your chance of being successful. — Michael Arrington

If you try, you've got a chance at succeeding. Failure isn't guaranteed. If you don't even try at all, you've already failed. — Christi Barth

It is a peaceful thing to be one succeeding. — Gertrude Stein

Many of us have unconsciously erected barriers to protect ourselves from failing or succeeding. We may think we're protecting ourselves by denying our creative impulses, but all we're doing is burying our authentic selves alive. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

It's the quiet little hit that is succeeding totally under the radar, ... NCIS. — Leslie Moonves

I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I'm more afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter. — Bob Goff

Indecision and fear can cripple any chances of succeeding and lead to maelstroms of regret that fuel our most fantastic nightmares. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Kaizen should be done when times are good or when the company is profitable, since your efforts to streamline and make improvements when the company is poor are limited to reduction in staff. Even if you try to go lean and cut out the fat to improve business performance, when your business is in a very difficult position financially there is no fat to be cut. If you are cutting out muscle, which you need, then you cannot say that your efforts to become lean are succeeding.The most important thing about doing kaizen is to do kaizen when times are good, the economy is strong, and the company is profitable — Taiichi Ohno

Thinking of Plan B muddies up your chances of succeeding at Plan A. — Charlie Day

These are challenging and exciting times. No previous generation of Australians has ever had such an opportunity. No other country in the world has such an opportunity now. So long as we retain faith in ourselves, practise tolerance and reward initiative, we should be in no doubt about succeeding. — John Yu

Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life. — Shonda Rhimes

The important thing is to build up my cardiovascular system, so I have the stamina to do stunts. To me, stepping over the line, taking a chance and succeeding is the ultimate freedom, be it in rock and roll or when executing a really challenging routine. — Wendy O. Williams

Every light has its shadow, and every shadow hath a succeeding morning. — Nicolaus Copernicus

He actually did it, didn't he?" Marsh said, shaking his head in wonder. "That bastard. There are two things I'll never forgive him for. The first is for stealing my dream of overthrowing the Final Empire, then actually succeeding at it."
Vin paused. "And the second?"
Marsh turned spike-heads towards her. "Getting himself killed to do it. — Brandon Sanderson

Difficulties arise whenever a committed relationship is succeeding. Love makes you vulnerable ... Your defenses relax and the dark side of your personality arises ... — Thomas Keating

Quitting my day job and starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk. It was a fool's leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. ( ... ) Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take. — Alan Moore

There are two types of persons in the world. If you're not the majority, you're either dead or succeeding at something. — Robin Sacredfire

Among the millions of nerve cells that clothe parts of the brain there runs a thread. It is the thread of time, the thread that has run through each succeeding wakeful hour of the individual. — Wilder Penfield

We ought to be cautious in taking even the best ascertained opinions and practices of the primitive Church for our own. If it could be satisfactorily shown that they esteemed it authorized and transmitted forever, that does not settle the question for us. We know how inveterately they were attached to their Jewish prejudices, and how often even the influence of Christ failed to enlarge their views. On every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a judgement more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the practice of the early ages. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Women now wield considerable power along political lines and I believe each succeeding year for some time to come will find them wielding that power more effectively. — Bertha Knight Landes

Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn't work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world. — Mitt Romney

The spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality. — Harryette Mullen

There are times when you have to defend yourself or someone else against relentless evil. And some of those times the only defense that has any hope of succeeding is a one-time use of brutal, devastating force. At such times good people act brutally. — Orson Scott Card

He wanted that again, that feeling of standing with her against all odds and succeeding. He wanted it so bad, he was going to risk destroying everything he and his father had worked for. — Kim Harrison

I was such a smart kid, I should have figured out that the only way to really get my parents' attention was to disappoint them or fail. But by the time I finally realized that, succeeding was already a habit too ingrained to break. — Sarah Dessen

As he shut the door, he was painfully aware that they were each talking about their young
only Wrath's had four paws and a tail.
Least he didn't have to worry about George succeeding him or being blind. — J.R. Ward

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors. — Thomas B. Macaulay

We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement. — Justin Trudeau

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country. — Thomas Jefferson

When William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey of his English realm at Gloucester in 1085, the result was a work so thorough, fair, dispassionate, and wide-ranging that it seemed to the succeeding generations to have come from another world. — James Buchan

Being a warrior doesn't mean winning or even succeeding. It means risking and failing and risking again, as long as you live. — Richard Strozzi-Heckler

I don't mind failing, but if I succeed it better be worth succeeding for. — Vinod Khosla

Nothing makes sense anymore, because all the meaning and purpose that life had for them was associated with accumulating, succeeding, building, protecting, and sense gratification. It was associated with the outward movement and identification with form, that is to say, ego. Most people cannot conceive of any meaning when their life, their world, is being demolished. And yet, potentially, there is even deeper meaning here than in the outward movement. — Eckhart Tolle

The people that are succeeding have often had a mentor of some kind. I think it makes a huge difference. — Julie Delpy

I remembered Nahadoth's lips on my throat and fought to suppress a shudder, only half succeeding. Death as a consequence of lying with a god wasn't something I had considered, but it did not surprise me. A mortal man's strength had its limits. He spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth. — N.K. Jemisin

They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself. After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling from the well. This well is isolated in the middle — Victor Hugo

A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making. — Stephen R. Bown

Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably. — Hippocrates

People see themselves as 'succeeding' because they are individually exceptional
they don't see that there is a mechanism that has made it possible for them. — Sarah Schulman

That's the worst ... or the best ... of real life, Anne. It won't let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable ... and succeeding ... even when you're determined to be unhappy and romantic. — L.M. Montgomery

Remember the 'Parable of the Talents' in the New Testament? Christ exhorts us to be the best we can be by developing our skills and abilities, by succeeding in all our tasks and endeavors. What better description can there be of capitalism? — Margaret Thatcher

God in his harmony has equal ends
For cedar that resists and reed that bends;
For good it is a woman sometimes rules,
Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools,
And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud,
With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd,
The somber human troop. — Victor Hugo

But I didn't want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding. — Charles Bukowski

Then when I heard the story of Who Moved My Cheese?, I realized my job was to paint a picture of 'New Cheese' that we would all want to pursue, so we could enjoy changing and succeeding, whether it was at work or in life. — Spencer Johnson

One danger of a man succeeding is that it teaches his wife and daughter not to worry about success. — Warren Farrell

And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there. I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often. — Gene Wolfe

In our competitive world we're taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in - so we don't hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable. Even Christians would rather talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering than yielding, submitting, obeying, and surrendering. But surrendering to God is the heart of worship. — Rick Warren

There is something special about baseball that goes far deeper than being a game. It is the father-son relationship that is built, the life lessons that are taught in the process of playing a game and the ability to overcome not succeeding all of the time and still considering yourself a success. — JohnA Passaro

I don't think anyone would look at Colombia today and say that it is failing. This positive outcome is an example of the effective application of smart power - it is succeeding. — James G. Stavridis

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. — Ted Sizer

Indeed one of the best ways to deflect attacks is to make it look like they're succeeding. It's the software equivalent of playing dead. — Joel Spolsky

You shouldn't fear failure. You should fear succeeding at the wrong thing. I may fail, but I'm failing at the right thing. — Melissa D'Arabian

Self-love is the source of that ignorant conceit of knowledge which is always doing and never succeeding. — Plato