Quotes about success

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

If at first you don't succeed; you are running about average.

— M. H. Alderson

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?

— James Allen

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

— Woody Allen

It's simply a matter of doing what you do best and not worrying about what the other fellow is going to do.

— John R. Amos

Success is the person who year after year reaches the highest limits in his field.

— Sparky Anderson

You are wholly complete and your success in life will be in direct proportion to your ability to accept this truth about you.

— Dr. Robert Anthony

We fall forward to succeed.

— Mary Kay Ash

Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome. Not everyone can be Number 1.

— Arthur Ashe

Success, or failure, very often arrives on wings that seem mysterious to us.

— Dr. Marcus Bach

If at first you don't succeed, try to hide your astonishment.

— Harry F. Banks

Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking.

— Bernard M. Baruch

Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole.

— Vicki Baum

Character is more important than intelligence for success.

— Gilberte Beaux

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

— Henry Ward Beecher

Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

— Henry Ward Beecher

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider -- and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation -- persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

— Alexander Graham Bell

The toughest thing about being a success is that you've got to keep on being a success.

— Irving Berlin

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.

— Al Bernstein

The measure of a man's success must be according to his ability. The advancement he makes from the station in which he was born gives the degree of his success.

— Sir Walter Besant

Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.

— Ambrose Bierce

As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.

— Josh Billings

When all is said and done, success without happiness is the worst kind of failure.

— Louis Binstock

Too often the shortcut, the line of least resistance, is responsible for evanescent and unsatisfactory success.

— Louis Binstock

Very often we are our own worst enemy as we foolishly build stumbling blocks on the path that leads to success and happiness.

— Louis Binstock

Success doesn't mean the absence of failures; it means the attainment of ultimate objectives. It means winning the war, not every battle.

— Edwin C. Bliss

A young person, to achieve, must first get out of his mind any notion either of the ease or rapidity of success. Nothing ever just happens in this world.

— Edward William Bok

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

— Erma Bombeck

The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that we can succeed.

— Nelson Boswell

My definition of success is control.

— Kenneth Branagh

To guarantee success, act as if it were impossible to fail.

— Dorothea Brande

Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.

— Dr. Joyce Brothers

Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.

— Charles Browder

Behind every successful man there's a lot of unsuccessful years.

— Bob Brown

I hope I have convinced you -- the only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren't is the willingness to work very, very hard.

— Helen Gurley Brown

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

— Pearl S. Buck

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.

— Warren Buffett

The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people -- your family, friends, and coworkers, and even strangers you meet along the way.

— Barbara Bush

Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.

— Sarah Caldwell

It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.

— Eddie Cantor

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

— Thomas Carlyle

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

— Dale Carnegie

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

— Johnny Carson

There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.

— Herbert N. Casson

Success makes success, like money makes money.

— Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.

— Anton Chekhov

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

— Winston Churchill

Behind every successful man you'll find a woman who has nothing to wear.

— Harold Coffin

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out...

— Robert Collier

Success doesn't come to you you go to it.

— Marva Collins

When we fail our pride supports us and when we succeed, it betrays us.

— Charles Caleb Colton

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports; when we succeed; it betrays us.

— Charles Caleb Colton

No matter what you do, do it to your utmost. I always attribute my success to always requiring myself to do my level best, if only in driving a tack in straight.

— Russel H. Conwell

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

— Bill Cosby

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.

— Walter Cronkite

It's the men behind who make the man ahead.

— Merle Crowell

Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing. [On the prospects for his 1997 movies The Rainmaker and Good Will Hunting]

— Matt Damon

Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.

— Sammy Davis Jr.

The road to success runs uphill.

— Willie Davis

To succeed means that you may have to step out of line and march to the sound of your own drummer.

— Keith Degreen

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

— Walt Disney

The secret of success is consistency of purpose.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Success is the child of audacity.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

— Benjamin Disraeli

To succeed you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.

— Tony Dorsett

When a man has done his best, has given his all, and in the process supplied the needs of his family and his society, that man has made a habit of succeeding.

— Mack R. Douglas

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year.

— John Foster Dulles

Be awfully nice to them going up, because you're gonna meet them all coming down.

— Jimmy Durante

Success is not something you get out of what you do.

— Wayne Dyer

Success... it's what you do with what you've got.

— Leroy Van Dyke

A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

— Bob Dylan

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is not so... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

— Thomas A. Edison

If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.

— Albert Einstein

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

— T. S. Eliot

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no way to success in art but to take off your coat, grind paint, and work like a digger on the railroad, all day and every day.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

One principle reason why men are so often useless is that they divide and shift their attention among a multiplicity of objects and pursuits.

— G. Emmons

Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.

— Sam Ewing

What is the recipe for successful achievement? To my mind there are just four essential ingredients: Choose a career you love, give it the best there is in you, seize your opportunities, and be a member of the team.

— Benjamin F. Fairless

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

— William Feather

When I am delivering my very best, then that is when I feel successful.

— Art Fettig

There are opportunities everywhere, just as there have always been...

— Charles Fillmore

It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.

— Harvey S. Firestone

Success is the sum of details.

— Harvey S. Firestone

The real winners are not those at the top but those who have come the farthest over the toughest roads. Your victory may never make the headlines. But you will know about it, and that's what counts.

— Ernest A. Fitzgerald

I have found it is much easier to make a success in life than to make a success of one's life.

— G. W. Follin

Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.

— Malcolm S. Forbes

The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?

— Brendan Francis

My definition of success is total self acceptance. We can obtain all of the material possessions we desire quite easily, however, attempting to change our deepest thoughts and learning to love ourselves is a monumental challenge. We may achieve success in our business lives but it never quite means as much if we do not feel good inside. Once we feel good about ourselves inside we can genuinely lend ourselves to others.

— Franki

You will find the key to success under the alarm clock.

— Benjamin Franklin

Would you live with ease, do what you should, and not what you please. Success has ruined many a man.

— Benjamin Franklin

The great recipe for success is to work, and always work.

— Leon Gambetta

Don't expect mangoes when you plant papayas.

— Mimfa A. Gibson

The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs... one step at a time.

— Joe Girard