This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We do not meet with success except by reiterated efforts." - Madame de Maintenon, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, formerly Madame Scarron
"To know how to wait is the great secret of success." - Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
"It is not enough to begin; continuance is necessary. Mere enrollment will not make one scholar; the pupil must continue in the school through the long course, until he masters every branch. Success depends upon staying power. The reason for failure in most cases is lack of perseverance." - J. R. Miller, fully James Russell Miller
"Nothing is impossible to the man that can will. Is that necessary? That shall be. This is the only law of success." - Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau
"Success can corrupt; usefulness can only exalt." - Dmitri Mitropoulos
"The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every sort." - Theodore T. Munger
"People will listen a great deal more patiently when you explain your mistakes than when you explain your success." - Wilbur N. Nesbit
"The time-man in us does not know now. He is always preparing something in the future, or busy with what happened in the past... All decisions that belong to the life in time, to success, to business, comfort, are about ‘tomorrow’. All decisions about the right thing to do, about how to act, are about tomorrow. It is only what is done in now that counts, and this is a decision always about oneself and with oneself, even though its effect may touch other people’s lives ‘tomorrow’. Now is spiritual... Spiritual values have nothing to do with time." - Maurice Nicoll
"The bravery founded on hope of recompense, fear of punishment, experience of success, on rage, or on ignorance of danger, is but common bravery, and does not deserve the name. True bravery proposes a just end; measures the dangers, and meets the result with calmness and unyielding decision." - François de La Noüe
"One never learns by success. Success is the plateau that one rests upon to take breath and look down from upon the straight and difficult path, but one does not climb upon a plateau." - Andrew Preston Peabody
"The earth we live on is so small that even if someone was honored by everyone on our planet it is still insignificant. Also, a person’s lifetime is so short that even if he received honor and approval his entire life, it is so short in comparison with eternity. This is the ultimate success an approval-seeker can hope for, but the reality is that even if you spend you entire life trying to win the approval of others, only a small number of people will know and approve of you. The approval you do gain lasts a very short time and is soon forgotten as if it never was." - Bachya Ibn Pekudah
"Success in business does not depend upon genius. Any young man of ordinary intelligence who is normally sound and not afraid to work should succeed in spite of obstacles and handicaps if he plays the game fairly and keeps everlastingly at it." - J. C. Penney, formally James Cash Penney
"Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success." - Austin Phelps
"Education means drawing forth from the mind latent powers and developing them, so that in mature years one may apply these powers not merely to success in one's occupation, but to success in the greatest of all arts - the art of living." - William Lyon Phelps
"One of the chief reasons for success in life is the ability to maintain a daily interest in one's work, to have a chronic enthusiasm, to regard each day as important." - William Lyon Phelps
"Nothing is so imprudent as success." - James Robinson Planché
"Success breeds conservatism, and that means a love affair with the status quo and an aversion to change." - Frank Popoff or Popov
"There are difficulties in your path. Be thankful for them. They will test your capabilities of resistance; you will be impelled to persevere from the very energy of the opposition. But what of him that fails? What does he gain? Strength for life. The real merit is not in the success but in the endeavor; and win or lose, he will be honored and crowned." - William Morley Punshon
"The strong man does not always ride the wave of success. The strong man is the one who can turn the misfortune of life into character; the one who is committed to the essential and not the superficial. He faces and overcomes inner challenges and depends not on outer acclaim." - Ensworth Reisner
"Society is ever ready to worship success, but rarely forgives failure." - Madame Roland, Jeanne Manon Philon, born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon
"A person who makes his happiness dependent on material or physical pleasures will never be guaranteed happiness. There is always something that might happen to destroy his happiness and success. The only guarantee for happiness is to find happiness in spiritual growth." - Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein
"It takes two to make a marriage a success and only one a failure." - Lord Samuel, Herbert Louis Samuel, First Viscount Samuel
"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius, for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world." - Felix Schelling, fully Felix Emmanuel Schelling
"Among the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to worldly success, there is one, the importance of which is more real, and which is generally underrated in our day... It is courtesy." - Herbert Schiffer
"Whatever you have received more than others - in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life - all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your good fortune, you must render in return some sacrifice of your own life for another life." - Albert Schweitzer
"To achieve something great in the world you need Passion To fulfill vision, a great leader’s courage comes from Passion Whatever it may be, you must find your Passion If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins Follow your passion and success will follow you! Never underestimate the power of passion Without passion religion is spiritless Without Passion history is meaningless Without Passion art is useless Follow your passion and success will follow you! When you take up a mission with passion There are no dreams too large No innovation unimaginable No frontiers beyond reach Follow your passion and success will follow you! Our passions are the winds that propel our vessel Our reason is the pilot that steers her Without winds the vessel would not move Without a pilot she would be lost Follow your passion and success will follow you! There is no end and there is no beginning There is only the passion of life Passion is universal humanity Passion is the genesis of genius Follow your passion and success will follow you! " - Pooja Natarajan
"The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right." - Edward C. Simmons
"It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure." - Samuel Smiles
"The great highroad of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and the work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort." - Samuel Smiles
"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor." - Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
"Success and failure are not absolutes. They exist only in relation to your expectations, or to a given norm." - Tauri NULL
"It is success that colors all in life; success makes fools admired, makes villains honest." - Edward Thomson
"In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world." -
"Failure changes to success when one acquires self-knowledge." - Louise A. Vernon
"Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance." - Charles William "C.W." Wendte
"When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is truly a wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on." - Richard Whately
"Every failure is a step to success; every detection of what is false directs us toward what is true; every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so, but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, is the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of error is without some latent charm derived from truth." - William Whewell
"The man who works need never be a problem to anyone. Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected. Life is a long line of opportunities. Wealth is not in making money, but in making the man while he is making money. Production, not destruction, leads to success." - John Wicker
"Success often costs more than it is worth." - Edward Wigglesworth
"Let's learn and label properly Disappointment and Discouragement for what they are - two completely different states of mind. Disappointment can be a spur to improvement that will contribute to success. But Discouragement is a mortal enemy that destroys courage and robs one of the will to fight. It is not circumstance that causes Discouragement, but one's own reaction to that circumstance. Everyone must meet Disappointment, many times; it is simply a part of life. When it is met, we may resign ourselves to Discouragement and failure. Or we may recognize each Disappointment as an asset by which we can profit, and take new strength from a lesson learned. The choice is ours, each time, to make." - John M. Wilson, fully John Moulder Wilson
"There is nothing in the world that will take the chip off one's shoulder like a feeling of success." - Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe
"No one ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required that determines greatness." - Charles Kendall Adams
"One of the greatest secrets of success and happiness is always to have something left over." - George Matthew Adams