A Quote by Lillian Hellman

But success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair. — © Lillian Hellman
But success and failure are not true opposites, and they're not even in the same class. I mean, they're not even a couch and a chair.
Most people think of success and failure as opposites, but they both are products of the same process.
The man who lives for himself is a failure. Even if he gains much wealth, position or fortune, he is still a failure. The man who lives for others has achieved true success. A rich man who consecrates his wealth and his position to the good of humanity is a success.
Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.
The opposite of success is not failure. Unsuccessful efforts are not failures unless they so discourage you that you abandon further efforts to achieve your goal. Even then, the venture or effort may be a failure but you are not. Failure is an event not a character trait.
If you build your own chair, there is a lot of things that happen. You could probably buy a nice chair for less money than a chair that you built yourself, and it might even look better, but if you build that chair, you're going to take care of it and maintain it because it's your chair. If it breaks, you know how to fix it.
Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick.
Failure and success are part of the same seed. If you don't embrace your failure, you never really know what success is.
In every failure is the seed of success... Our failures are stepping stones in the mechanics of creation, bringing us even closer to our goals. In reality, there is no such thing as failure. What we call failure is just a mechanism through which we can learn to do things right.
If all of the issues that I have worked on were depending on some measure of success, it would be a total failure. I don't anticipate success. We're not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful. I couldn't even tell you what success is.
I thank God that I live in a country where dreams can come true, where failure sometimes is the first step to success and where success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be.
I might have 'couch syndrome.' I'm always sleeping on the couch at home, even when I have a comfortable bed. I'm used to it.
When you fail, things get real. In fact, they get real real. If your success was a high profile success, then your failure will be a high profile failure. Opportunities and 'friendships' will evaporate. Failure shines a bright light on all relationships. The ones that last are pure and true, which is a true gift.
You must never conclude, even though everything goes wrong, that you cannot succeed. Even at the worst there is a way out, a hidden secret that can turn failure into success and despair into happiness. No situation is so dark that there is not a ray of light
Cultivate your desire for success to be greater than the fear of failure; Failure is merely a pitstop between where you stand and success. Failure allows you to learn the fastest; Failure inspires winners and defeats losers.
If success were easy, then it would not necessarily be true success. Some of history's most successful people learned to cope with failure as a natural offshoot of the experimental and creative process and often learned more from their failures than their successes. By taking the attitude that failure is merely a detour on the way to our destination, hope can blossom into success.
Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.
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