Unsuccessfully Quotes & Sayings

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that. — Ann Leckie

Don't worry about it. He's just moody because it's been about nine months since he's gotten laid, and he thinks I'm going to get some tonight."
I almost choked on the pancakes.
Oz put his hand on his belly and looked down. "Don't make that face." He tried unsuccessfully to keep himself from laughing. "I know it's not happening. Besides, I don't you well enough yet. You could be scary."
I forced the uncooperative bite of pancake down my throat. "You think I'm scary?" I squealed. "I hope you realize this is coming from the guy who said he wasn't human. — Katherine Pine

It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organize something, to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for 6,000 years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again. — Albert J. Nock

After about half an hour I give up, thinking he must have stumbled home, when I find him. I'm in the girls' toilets, washing my hands, and I hear drunken poetry being recited from the end stall.

I walk down to it, push open the door, and there he is, lying on the ground, his head between the wall and the bowl. "Do you mind? I'm having a private moment here, Rachel."

I crouch on the floor beside him. "Here's a tip for a private moment: don't have it on the floor of the girls' toilets."

"The girls?" he asks.

"The added extras didn't give it away?"

He lifts his head and squints at the unit in the opposite corner. "Not a mailbox?"

"Not a mailbox, Henry," I say as I try, unsuccessfully, to haul him into a standing position. — Cath Crowley

Israel expanded beyond its original boundaries only because the Arab powers attacked Israel and the U.N. demarcation unsuccessfully in 1948. The endless caterwauling about the 1967 borders is rubbish. — Conrad Black

So much of unhappiness, it seems to me, is due to nerves; and bad nerves are the result of having nothing to do, or doing a thing badly, unsuccessfully or incompetently. Of all the unhappy people in the world, the unhappiest are those who have not found something they want to do. True happiness comes to those who do their work well, followed by a refreshing period of rest. True happiness comes from the right amount of work for the day. — Lin Yutang

In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.
The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it. — Mark Twain

In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use "liberal" in the sense in which I have used it, the term "libertarian" has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

He should have said something, why hadn't he? Costis wondered. In fact, the king had. He had complained at every step all the way across the palace, and they'd ignored it. If he'd been stoic and denied the pain, the entire palace would have been in a panic already, Eddisian soldiers on the move. He'd meant to deceive them, and he'd succeeded. It made Costis wonder for the first time just how much the stoic man really wants to hide when he unsuccessfully pretends not to be in pain. — Megan Whalen Turner

No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or if the things we unsuccessfully avoid do, then it seems reasonable (if somewhat ungracious) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell we were thinking. — Daniel Gilbert

war is not inevitable. Nor has it always been with us. War is a human invention - an organized, deliberate action of an anti-social kind - and in the long span of human life on Earth, a fairly recent one. For more than 99 percent of the time that humans have lived on this planet, most of them have never made war. Many languages don't even have a word for it. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You'll see.
What's more, war is obsolete. Most nations don't make war anymore, except when coerced by the United States to join some spurious "coalition." The earth is small, and our time here so short. No other nation on the planet makes war as often, as long, as forcefully, as expensively, as destructively, as wastefully, as senselessly, or as unsuccessfully as the United States. No other nation makes war its business. — Ann Jones

The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by meanness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd. — Theodor Mommsen

Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright
They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose
They'd build a ship
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life.
They wouldn't quarrel
Or break my specs
Or talk about a beast
If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup ... a sign or something. — William Golding

It had always been Roth; from the moment he swaggered into that d- alley, where I'd been unsuccessfully fighting off a demon, it had been him for me. Maybe I'd been too blind to see that after he returned from the pits.
Maybe I had been too angry with him after the way he initially acted. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Had he ever lost his heart so much to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily? — Hermann Hesse

I tried a few times, unsuccessfully, to lose weight. It wasn't until I joined Weight Watchers that I was finally able to do it. I went to meetings and my son came with me. The best thing was that I could eat what I wanted and still lose weight. Slow and steady, I was getting my pre-pregnancy body back. — Jenny McCarthy

... our 'Physick' and 'Anatomy' have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Do what experts since the dawn of recorded history have told you you must do: pay the price by becoming the person you want to become. It's not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully. — Earl Nightingale

You look at love, and especially woman, as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. You feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. This is a genuinely modern point of view. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Our present conscious self and our shadow must learn how to coexist. The first step to attaining personal transcendence commences when the conscious mind and the unconscious mind square off and battle for preeminence. A person who achieves self-realization understands the interworking of both their conscious mind and the unconscious mind and integrates their unique dichotomy into their sense of a self. A person who suffers from a personality disorders or neuroses failed to confront their shadow or unsuccessfully integrated the conflicting motives of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind into a central and fully integrated persona. — Kilroy J. Oldster

When these flies were put together in all-male groups they formed long, moving chains resembling conga lines, with each male attempting (unsuccessfully) to mate with the male in front of it. — Simon LeVay

A 2006 Senate Report on the intelligence gathered about Iraq before the war also concluded, "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi. — Charles River Editors

What do you mean 'warn me'?" Why did they both think I was going to claw her eyes out? The old me must've been psychotic."

"I told you she has a soft spot for me."

"Yeah, and I have a soft spot for tater tots, but that doesn't require me to warn people."

"I think I can safely say she doesn't feel about me like you feel about tater tots," Cheney said, unsuccessfully trying to suppress his amusement.

"I don't know, I really like tater tots," I mumbled.

Cheney's laughter filled the room. "I stand corrected. Apparently your love for fried potato nuggets is much deeper that I gave credit. — Liz Schulte

When he realizes that Carmel's standing behind me, he quickly checks his face for drool and tries to smooth his hair down. Unsuccessfully. — Kendare Blake

She now lost every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side of the room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself — Jane Austen

Why incentivize laziness? High-school students shouldn't be discouraged from grappling, sometimes unsuccessfully, with challenging books, pictures, and songs. A really, really good work of art doesn't bow down to you; you step up to it, and it rewards you. In the end, kids faced with what Chaucer actually wrote may still dislike him, and I'm fine with that; they will have earned that opinion rather than had it handed to them. For heaven's sake, it's easy for kids to see themselves and their peers in a rap song. When they can start to see themselves in a 14th-century poem, then they're actually learning something. — Jeff Sypeck

Proper circus you make,' Berkley said, with a snort of laughter Laurence considered unnecessary, when they landed in the clearing and set the dog down; it promptly went tearing around the parade ground yelling at the dragons. For their part they were only interested and curious until the dog bit a too-inquisitive Dulcia on the tender nip of her muzzle, at which she hissed in anger; the dog yelped and fled back to the dubious shelter of Temeraire's side; he looked down at it in irritation and tried unsuccessfully to nudge it away.
'Pray be careful of the creature; I have no idea how we should get or train another,' Laurence said, and Temeraire at last grumbling allowed it to curl up beside him. — Naomi Novik

Hurry up and go back and come over here quick, you cock suckers." . . .[Counsel for the claimants objected unsuccessfully to this language.] What Akipa meant to have them understand was that he had no fear of them; that he despised them. The Indians had no curse words, or oaths, and they used this expression to express their contempt. — Gary Clayton Anderson

People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people
men and women
to face. — Robert Jensen

I've always been your friend, Alexa. Now go. I will try to kill you as unsuccessfully as I can. — Daniel Suarez

The real essence of any marriage that has struggled, however unsuccessfully, towards happiness, lies in the growth of a wordless understanding that what is acceptable to one partner will be acceptable to the other. — Wallis Simpson

You are so beautiful," he sighed into her hair.
She tried to check her girlish giggle, unsuccessfully. "Gray, it's dark as
pitch. You can't even see me."
"Even in the dark," he murmured against her skin. "You are the most
beautiful woman I've ever known, even in the dark. — Tessa Dare

People hit the sauce in a big way all winter. Amidst blizzards they wrestle unsuccessfully with the dark comedy of their lives, laughter trapped in their frigid gizzards. Meanwhile, the mercury just plummets, like a migrating duck blasted out of the sky by some hunter in a cap with fur earflaps. — Amy Gerstler

Halt eyed them balefully. They were all being so obvious about not mentioning his sudden reappearance that it was even worse than if they had commented on it ...
'Oh, go on!' he said. 'Somebody say something! I know what you're thinking!'
'It's good to see you up and about, Halt,' Selethen said gravely ...
Halt glared at the others and they quickly chorused their pleasure at seeing him back to his normal self. But he could see the grins they didn't quite manage to hide. He fixed a glare on Alyss.
'I'm surprised at you Alyss,' he said. 'I expected no better of Will and Evanlyn, of course. Heartless beasts, the pair of them. But you! I thought you had been better trained!' ...
'Halt, I'm sorry! It's not funny, you're right ... Shut up, Will.' This last was directed at Will as he tried, unsuccessfully, to smother a snigger. — John Flanagan

The white scar on his cheek was slightly puckered at one end, as when a seamstress leaves the needle in the fabric, before she quits for the day; this phantom needle lay just beyond the edge of his mouth, and seemed to tug it upward, as if trying to coax his stern expression - unsuccessfully - into a smile. — Eleanor Catton

The photographer discovers himself/herself being photographed and we can guess he is uncomfortable. Unsuccessfully he/she tries to recompose his posture and to look like a photographer taking photos. But no, he is and continues to be a spectator. The momentous fact of being photographed leads him to becoming an actor. And, as always, actors must assume a role, which is only an elegant way of avoiding to say they must choose sides, choose a faction, take an option. — Subcomandante Marcos

Nearly all the Escapists in the long past have managed their own budget and their social relations so unsuccessfully that I wouldn't want them for my landlords, or my bankers, or my neighbors. They were valuable, like powerful stimulants, only when they were left out of the social and industrial routine. — Willa Cather

Yes, seven years old she was, when she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother what Christmas was all about, and Mrs Castaway replied (once only, after which the subject was forever forbidden): 'It's the day Jesus Christ died for our sins. Evidently unsuccessfully, since we're still paying for them. — Michel Faber

Fellowship" is a Christianspeak for "flirt with unsuccessfully". — Kevin Roose

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! — Alison Miller

Go ahead. You're not going to walk in on anyone. I'm home alone."
"The whole night?"
Immediately, I realized it might not have been the smartest thing to say. "Dorothea will be coming soon." That was a lie. Dorothea was long gone. It was close to midnight.
"Dorothea?"
"Our housekeeper. She's old- but strong. Very strong." I tried to squeeze past him. Unsuccessfully.
"Sounds frightening," he said, retrieving the key from the lock. He held it out for me.
"She can clean a toilet inside and out in under a minute. More like terrifying. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction. — Aldous Huxley

Many times he had tried unsuccessfully to let go his hold on her. They had many fine times together, fine talks between the loves of the white nights, but always when he turned away from her into himself he left her holding Nothing in her hands and staring at it, calling it many names, but knowing it was only the hope that he would come back soon. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt.
Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt's collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I'd
met them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on top
of it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted.
"Hindenburg," I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. "Walt, why in the world - ?"
"Sorry!" he yelled. "Wrong amulet!"
The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn't much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawed
at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas.
I moved to Walt's side and tried to get my bearings. — Rick Riordan

The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life — William Golding

Often people have an instant intuition that an action is immoral, and then struggle, often unsuccessfully, to come up with reasons why it is immoral.169 — Steven Pinker

Ho threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, and alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse and the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion and the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising and the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality.. — Allen Ginsberg

I've always argued, unsuccessfully, that there's no point in giving money to the arts unless you educate people in them. — Richard Eyre

Of all the wars that have taken place wince then, none has endured so long as the conflict between knowledge and belief. For centuries now, knowledge has attempted, unsuccessfully, to supersede belief. But the entire clash stems from a misapprehension of the nature of belief. We can't not believe; and we won't ever know everything. We know this much: knowledge remains an endless advance toward an end point that endlessly recedes. — Adam Leith Gollner

Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore. — Loren Eiseley

The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans. — Jessica Lynch