“A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.”
Seneca
ResilienceSkill
Failure Quotes
200 FAMOUS QUOTES · FAILURE
Failure Quotes
Read 200 of the best failure quotes about mistakes, setbacks, trying again and turning failure into success, from Keats, Edison, Whitman and more.
“The beginnings of all things are small.”
Cicero
Small StepsBeginnings
“It is better to learn late than never.”
Publilius Syrus
LearningSecond Chances
“Better late than never.”
Livy
PersistenceSecond Chances
“The mountains will labour, and a ridiculous mouse will be born.”
Horace
DisappointmentFunny
“The cause is hidden; the effect is visible to all.”
Ovid
ConsequencesReflection
“Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.”
Terence
PersistenceProblem Solving
“If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined.”
Aesop
Unanswered WishesWisdom
“If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.”
Rabindranath Tagore
PerspectiveMoving On
“O time! thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me to untie!”
William Shakespeare
PatienceTime
“When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state.”
William Shakespeare
Low MomentsLoneliness
“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer.”
William Shakespeare
TurnaroundHope
“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”
William Shakespeare
Silver LiningsWisdom
“Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud turn forth her silver lining on the night?”
John Milton
Silver LiningsHope
“The virtue of Prosperity is temperance; the virtue of Adversity is fortitude.”
Francis Bacon
AdversityVirtue
“Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us.”
François de La Rochefoucauld
RegretHuman Nature
“It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.”
Thomas Fuller
HopeHard Times
“The wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
CriticismGrowth
“Then, welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough.”
Robert Browning
SetbacksGrowth
“Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
RegretTrying
“I will either find a way or make one.”
Hannibal
DeterminationResourcefulness
“Optimism is true moral courage.”
Ernest Shackleton
OptimismCourage
“There is no success without hardship.”
Sophocles
HardshipSuccess
“The man who runs may fight again.”
Menander
RetreatSecond Chances
“Failure is the mother of success.”
Traditional Chinese Proverb
SuccessLessons