Great Throughts Treasury

"Success is the sum of details." - Harvey Samuel Firestone

"The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments." - Gustave Flaubert

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." - Henry Ford

"Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"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 Behan

"It is one of the ironic and yet pathetic aspects of our competitive life that with each step up the ladder of success, the regimentation of the individual and his family becomes more intense and coercive. The goal of competitive striving is to be allowed to submit to these extractions and find fulfillment only in doing as faithfully as possible what others in one's competitive class are doing" - Lawrence K. Frank

"To be a success, devote three or four hours a day to being an executive and the rest of the time to thinking." - Felix Frankfurter

"Success is getting what you want, happiness is getting what you get." - David Gardner, fully David Pierpont Gardner

"No age or time of life, no position or circumstance, has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing!" - Paul Géraldy, pen name of Paul Lefevre

"People who make money often make mistakes, and even have major setbacks, but they believe they will eventually prosper, and they see every setback as a lesson to be applied in their toward success." - Jerry Gillies

"If I were to prescribe one process in the training of men which is fundamental to success in any direction, it would be thoroughgoing training in the habit of observation. It is a habit which every one of us should be seeking ever more to perfect." - Eugene Gifford Grace

"Love is the normal state of being, the state that puts you into entire harmony with all the laws of God and Nature, gives wings to your thoughts, inspiration to your efforts, and success to your enterprises." -

"There are two kinds of discontent in this world: The discontent that works, and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second." - Gordon Graham

"Nothing can stand against success and yet keep fresh. Nations as well as individuals feel its vulgarizing power." - R. B. Cunninghame Graham, fully Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham

"The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"The essential element of successful strategy is that it derives its success from the differences between competitors with a consequent difference in their behavior. Ordinarily, this means that any corporate policy and plan which is typical of the industry is doomed to mediocrity. Where this is not so, it should be possible to demonstrate that all other competitors are at a distinct disadvantage." - Bruce Doolin Henderson

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they never quit." -

"It is a deep-seated belief on the part of almost all Americans that their success will be better assured as they help to build the success of others." - Paul G. Hoffman, fully Paul Gray Hoffman

"Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in securing the success which you seek but it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. So, day by day, and week by week; so month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that progress gain in strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it." -

"If we are to succeed, we must think success. If we are to be happy, we must think happily. If we are to be well, we must think healthful, constructive thoughts. If we are to get over confusion, we must think peace. The mind can never accept what it rejects." - Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

"Vital is the relation between earthly sorrow and eternal satisfaction. The travail to which God’s saints are subjected results in the birth of nobler natures and more sanctified spirits. Pain always promotes progress, and suffering invariably ensures success." -

"Whether a man accepts from fortune her spade and will look downward and dig, or from aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"Belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that will guarantee the success of any venture." - William James

"The secret of success of every man who has ever been successful lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing those things that failures don't like to do." - A. J. King, fully Andrew Jackson King

"Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I find no foeman in the road but fear; to doubt is failure and to dare success." -

"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire." - Reggie Leach, fully Reginald Joseph Leach

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing." - Abraham Lincoln

"To have faith where you cannot see; to be willing to work on in the dark; to be conscious of the fact that so long as you strive for the best, there are bertter things on the way, this in itself is success." -

"To know how to wait is the great secret to success." -

"Good-fellowship, unflagging, is the prime requisite for success in our society, and the man or woman who smiles only for reasons of humor or pleasure is a deviate." - Marya Mannes

"No worldly success can compensate for failure in the home." - David O. McKay

"In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed." - Leon Montenaeken, fully Louis Moreau Constant Corneille van Montenaeken

"Success generally depends upon knowing how long it takes to succeed." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"There is but one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way." - Christopher Morley, fully Christopher Darlington Morley

"How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low success." - Jean Mary Morman

"Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success." - Theodore T. Munger

"Have success and there will always be fools to say that you have talent." - Édouard Jules Henri Pailleron

"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." -

"Business is founded on vision and confidence; success on industry and cooperation." - John Henry Patterson

"To follow, without halt, one aim: There's the secret of success." - Anna Pavlova (Paulovna)

"I can give you a six-word formula for success: "Think things through - then follow through."" -

"There is a grand fearlessness in faith. He who in his heart of hearts reverences the good, the true, the holy - that is, reverences God - does not tremble at the apparent success of attacks upon the outworks of faith. They may shake those who rest on those outworks - they do not move him whose soul reposes on the truth itself. He needs no prop or crutches to support his faith. Founded on a Rock, Faith can afford to gaze undismayed at the approaches of Infidelity." -

"The process of writing a book is infinitely more important than the book that is completed as a result of the writing, let alone the success or failure the book may have after it is written... the book is merely a symbol of the writing. In writing the book, I am living. I am growing. I am tapping myself. I am changing. The process is the product." -

"Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success." - George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala

"In my mind, talent plus knowledge, plus effort account for success." -

"The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experiences retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself." - Albert Schweitzer

"Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased." - Ralph C. Smedley