We often get caught up in notions of success and failure. These powerful constructs can demarcate how we appraise our worth and the direction of our lives. Whether this is a growth-enabling or a growth-inhibiting activity depends very much on your personal understanding of what constitutes success and failure. Here are some aphorisms which may help guide your thinking in new directions.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, and try again. Then give up. There’s no sense in being a damned fool about it. – W. C. Fields

If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents. -  F. Scott Fitzgerald

Whether you think that you can or that you can’t, you are usually right. -  Henry Ford

To accomplish great things, you must not only act but also dream, not only dream but also believe. -  Anatole France

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. – Viktor Frankl

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. – Benjamin Franklin,

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve. – Robert Frost,

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. – John Kenneth Galbraith,

Be braver — you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. – David Lloyd George

Things don’t go wrong, they simply happen. -  Jacob Ghitis

The wind and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. – Edward Gibbon

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong — or you are absolutely right. – Albert Guinon,

No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one. – Nathaniel Hawthorne,

Perfection is perfectly simple; fouling things up requires true skill. – Doug Horton

The more you wrestle with a turd, the more shit gets on you. – Shelly Horton

Positive anything is better than negative nothing. – Elbert Hubbard

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. -  Victor Hugo,

Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts. It’s what you do with what you have left. – Hubert Humphrey

Art is either plagiarism or revolution. – Paul Gauguin

Only the mediocre are always at their best. – Jean Giraudoux

When ideas fail, words come in very handy. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We will burn that bridge when we come to it. -  Nick Gorski,

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. – Doug Horton

The harder you fall, the higher you bounce. – Doug Horton

To buy happiness is to sell soul. – Doug Horton