Success quotes
What success is and what it costs, according to philosophers, statesmen and a few sharp-tongued satirists. Useful for a Monday post, and honest about the sources.
The library has 353 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 success quotes
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Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
William Shakespeare Twelfth Night, Act II Scene 5 -
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages.
Francis Bacon From his Will -
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life speech, 1899 (The Strenuous Life, 1900) -
The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
William Shakespeare Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would men observingly distil it out.
William Shakespeare Henry V, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii. Stanza 45 -
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell; Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n.
John Milton Paradise Lost -
I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington Up from Slavery -
No sadder proof can be given by man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
Thomas Carlyle On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History -
The drying up a single tear has more Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto viii. Stanza 3 -
The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
William Wordsworth Ode. Intimations of Immortality, Stanza 2 -
O, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, By mountains piled on mountains to the skies? Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man, Epistle IV -
’Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, Sempronius,—we’ll deserve it.
Joseph Addison Cato, Act i. Sc. 2 -
Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity.
James Russell Lowell Sonnet vi -
In the common world of fact the wicked are not punished nor the good rewarded. Success is given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I think that in practical life there is something about success, actual success, that is a little unscrupulous, something about ambition that is scrupulous always.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
To the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.
Abraham Lincoln July 10 -
In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Your word can never be as good as your bond, because your memory can never be as trustworthy as your honor.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible and comprehensible we crucified it.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Rather than be less Cared not to be at all.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. II -
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land.
John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel, Part i. Line 198 -
The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
Molière -
A really great man is known by three signs,—generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, and moderation in success.
Otto von Bismarck -
Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against it want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 150 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
How many after being celebrated by fame have been given up to oblivion; and how many who have celebrated the fame of others have long been dead.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VII.6 · translated by George Long -
Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward desert; for all will say they are deserving. The evil we have to fear from a fool who succeeds by right of birth, is neither so great nor so sure.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 313 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; Nothing’s so hard but search will find it out.
Robert Herrick Seek and Find -
Prosperity is the touchstone of virtue; for it is less difficult to bear misfortunes than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.
Tacitus -
Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and angels know of us.
Thomas Paine -
The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; and the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
Saadi -
The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan -
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
Sallust -
Success (by laws of competition) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as to obtain the direction of his work and take the profits of it. This is the real source of all great riches.
John Ruskin Unto This Last -
Thrice happy he whose name has been well spelt In the despatch: I knew a man whose loss Was printed Grove, although his name was Grose.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto viii. Stanza 18 -
It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence.
John Dryden -
Success in this department has its perils for those who succeed.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CLXXXVI -
Tasso is their glory and their shame. Hark to his strain! and then survey his cell! And see how dearly earn’d Torquato’s fame, And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv., St. 36 -
The idea of justice thus underwent a gradual sublimation from punishment and reward according to acts, to punishment and reward according to desert; or, in other words, according to motive.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CCXLIII -
Take care to be an economist in prosperity; there is no fear of your not being one in adversity.
Johann Georg von Zimmermann -
The star of the unconquered will.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Light of Stars -
At every word a reputation dies.
Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock, Canto iii. Line 16 -
His form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appear’d Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess Of glory obscur’d.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. i., Line 591 -
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found at last to be of our own producing.
Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield -
Victory belongs to the most persevering.
Napoleon -
Nor fame I slight, nor for her favors call: She comes unlook’d for, if she comes at all.
Alexander Pope -
Who thinks that fortune cannot change her mind, Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.
Alexander Pope Second Book of Horace, Satire II -
If we succeed, there will be glory enough.
Abraham Lincoln November 7 -
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else; very rarely to those who say to themselves, “Go to now, let us be a celebrated individual.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes -
Some, who had found this out, made their fortunes by letting him cheat them at play.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son -
Surer to prosper than prosperity Could have assured us.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. ii., Line 39 -
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?
Robert Browning The Ring and the Book. The Pope, Line 1185 -
He who comes up to his own ideal of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
William Hazlitt -
Convey a libel in a frown, And wink a reputation down!
Jonathan Swift Journal of a Modern Lady -
Whoever should have formed his opinion, or taken his measures, singly, from the ambitious part of Cardinal Mazarin’s character, would have found himself often mistaken.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son -
Forever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to love; And when we meet a mutual heart, Come in between and bid us part?
James Thomson Song -
To know how to wait is the great secret of success.
Joseph de Maistre