A Quote by Billy Collins

A motto I've adopted is, if at first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

Billy Collins

Quote Topics

Adopted Ever Evidence First Hide If At First Motto Succeed Tried

Quote Author

Billy Collins
American - Poet
Born: March 22, 1941

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Steven Wright

Try till you succeed...if you don't succeed once, then destroy all evidence of the fact that you tried!

W. C. Fields

There is an old motto that runs, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." This is nonsense. It ought to read, "If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once."

Stephen Leacock

I hate seeing people that look like you. Especially if God's living by the motto 'If at first you don't succeed.'

Demetri Martin

See? You’re the crazy one, you redheaded freak. I’ve been attempting to translate the phrase into Latin. If I ever succeed, I shall make it my personal motto.

Kirsten Miller

How often have I tried just hard enough so that I can then say to myself that I tried with the real purpose of assuaging my guilt about something I did not wish to succeed in the first place?

Lawrence Fagg

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.

Eric Clapton

Don’t wait to be hunted to hide, that was always my motto.

Samuel Beckett

All my life I've tried to hide my height. I was taller than everybody else and stood out, so I would slouch and try to hide it.

Tyler Perry

Being yourself is one of the hardest things because it's scary. You always wonder whether you'll be accepted for who you really are. I decided to call my record 'Inside Out' because that's my motto about life. I don't think you ever succeed at trying to be anyone else but who you truly are.

Emmy Rossum

I really think you cannot ever escape your history, what you've done, who you are, and things you've tried to hide. Even if no one ever finds out the secret you're trying to keep, the cost of that keeping has been so great, that it's destroyed you anyway. In all my writing, there are people who desperately wish the past is not what it is.

Patrick Somerville

The innovator's motto is this: I succeed or I learn but I never fail.

Paul Sloane

The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.

Frank A. Vanderlip

Adam tried to hide behind the trees in the garden. There is only one tree that can hide us from Him and that is the tree of the cross.

Vance Havner

The biogeographic evidence for evolution is now so powerful that I have never seen a creationist book, article, or lecture that has tried to refute it. Creationists simply pretend that the evidence doesn't exist.