SUCCESS
Quotes
1
The penalty of success is to be bored by the attentions os people who formerly snubbed you.
— Mary Wilson Little
2
. . . the man who succeeds is never conceded the right to fail.
— William Pickens
3
If every successful man needs a woman behind him, every successful woman needs at least three men.
— Margot Naylor
4
Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.
— Rosalind Russell
5
The only place where success comes before work is in a dictionary.
— Vidal Sassoon
6
You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.
— William Saroyan
7
If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z, where X is work, Y is play, Z is keep your mouth shut.
— Albert Einstein
8
The successful people are the ones who can think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
— Don Marquis
9
Success covers many blunders.
— George Bernard Shaw
10
Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
— Arthur Rubinstein
11
Behind every successful man there’s a lot of unsuccessful years.
— Bob Brown
12
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
13
Nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.
— Kenneth Boulding
14
How can they say my life isn’t a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
— Logan Pearsall Smith
15
We can’t all be lions in this world. There must be some lambs, harmless, kindly, gregarious creatures for eating and shearing.
— William Makepeace Thackeray
16
We may stop ourselves when going up, never when going down.
— Napoleon Bonaparte
17
As is the case in all branches of art, success depends in a very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and cannot be achieved except by dint of hard work.
— Anna Pavlova
18
Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.
— John Churton Collins
19
The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world’s dreadful injustice.
— Jules Renard
20
If a man can build a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
21
I am perfectly happy to believe that nobody likes us but the public.
— Rudolph Bing
22
The toughest thing about being a success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success
— Irving Berlin
23
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
— Woody Allen
24
[Success] means that you have, as performers will call it, “f*** you” money. . . . All that means is that I don’t have to do what I don’t want to do.
— Johnny Carson
25
There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man that didn’t tell you all about it?
— Kin Hubbard
26
There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.
— Christopher Morley
27
All you need in life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
— Mark Twain
28
. . . I’ve always gone along with the view that, first, the surest guarantee of sexual success is sexual success (you can’t have one without the other and you can’t have the other without the one), and, second, that the trappings of sexual success are only fleetingly distinguishable from sexual success itself.
— Martin Amis
29
Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.
— Oscar Wilde
30
The worst part of having success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.
— Bette Midler (attrib.)
31
Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.
— Josh Billings
32
Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.
— Sign on desk of broadcasting executive Ted Turner
33
I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.
— Walter Cronkite
34
There’s only one way to succeed in anything, and that is to give it everything. I do, and I demand that my players do.
— Vince Lombardi
35
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
— W. Somerset Maugham
36
Nothing succeeds like success.
— Alexandre Dumas
Sayings
1
Success is not the ability to get along with people, it’s the ability to get ahead of them.
2
Enthusiasm is more important than any other commodity. It will find solutions when none are apparent, and it will achieve success where none is thought possible.
3
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
4
If at first you don’t succeed, try reading the instructions.
Jokes
1
She always wanted to be successful so she could take it easy. Now she’s so successful there’s no way she can take it easy.
2
Behind every successful man there stands an amazed woman.