Losing But Winning Quotes

You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award. ~ John Corigliano

Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking! 'It's all right for him, he's an internationally famous wizard already!' But when I was twelve, I was just as much of a nobody as you are now. In fact, I'd say I was even more of a nobody! I mean, a few people have heard of you, haven't they? All that business with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!" He glanced at the lightning scar on Harry's forehead. "I know, I know - it's not quite as good as winning Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row, as I have - but it's a start, Harry, it's a start. ~ J.K. Rowling

Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world. ~ D.T. Suzuki

He's got great credentials by winning the World Cup but he did it with Brazil - my granny could probably have managed Brazil to World Cup success. ~ Gary Lineker

I learned pretty quickly that it's your WORK ETHIC that LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD. Education helps, but I've met failures who have Ph.D.s. I believe the hardest worker is always going to win. ~ Chris Rock

I know that a brighter view may be taken, and if the sadder has been emphasized in these
letters, it is only because we feel you know less about it.
For more has been written about the successes than about the failures, and it seems to us that it is more important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all
eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if
the position were thoroughly understood. Reinforcements of men and women are needed, but, far above all, reinforcements of prayer. And so we have tried to tell you the truth the uninteresting, unromantic truth
about the heathen as we find them, the work as it is. More workers are needed. No words can tell how much they are needed, how much they are wanted here. But we will never try to allure anyone to think of coming by painting coloured pictures, when the facts are in black and white. What if black and white will never attract like colours ? We care not for it ; our business
is to tell the truth. The work is not a pretty thing, to be looked at and admired. It is a fight. And battlefields are not beautiful.
But if one is truly called of God, all the difficulties and discouragements only intensify the Call. If things were ~ Amy Carmichael

Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color ... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are. ~ Mark Nepo

I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose. ~ Bette Davis

It may be a very little thing for you to say to a young man the few words that turn him from the way of ruin, and win him back to life and hope. It may be a very little thing to you; but it is every thing to the young man. ~ John Bartholomew Gough

The system-versus-goals model can be applied to most human endeavors. In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. In the exercise realm, running a marathon in under four hours is a goal, but exercising daily is a system. In business, making a million dollars is a goal, but being a serial entrepreneur is a system. ~ Scott Adams

She tries to take a step down the hall, but I tug on her hand and kiss her again, and this time it's not a peck. I kiss her hard, losing myself in her taste and her heat and every damn thing about her. I never expected her. Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don't know you ever lived without them. ~ Elle Kennedy

I want to raise a family and have a couple of small Dirks running around. But it will not be easy to win my heart. ~ Dirk Nowitzki

Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..."

And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

We gamble with the thought of winning. But it's the thought of what we might lose that excites us. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The difference in this town - here in Washington - on the war is not between Democrats and Republicans; it's between people who believe essentially we've already lost in Iraq and it's time to get out - and most of the rest of us who believe not only have we not lost, but we're winning. ~ Joe Lieberman

Someone once referred to modeling as being like winning the lottery gene pool. It's such an odd way to put things, but what is different about modelling is that the industry often picks you. ~ Erin O'Connor

If I had been Terry Pratchett the farmer, or Terry Pratchett the dentist, nobody would have paid any attention if I had announced I had Alzheimer's. But there is something fascinating about an author losing the power over words. ~ Terry Pratchett

If it wasn't for the determination and the will power we have in each other, we wouldn't have pulled through and got this win. Much respect to Spain, but the U.S. is back on top again. ~ LeBron James

But if I didn't know Kate, then maybe I didn't know myself-and if was that not-knowing that made my gut clench. Like losing your balance, that whoosh of almost falling, before pulling yourself back in line. ~ Lauren Myracle

They told me the drugs would take away the pain.
They told me the drugs would help me sleep.
They are wrong. The pain of losing Damien hasn't gone away. And I hardly ever sleep.
There's a part of me that wishes I could close my eyes and shut out the world, but I can't. I can't because I know behind my eyelids, I'll see him. He'll be there looking so fresh and alive. His skin will be vibrant with color, his blue blue eyes sparkling. He'll flash me his radiant smile and for a few minutes, I'll actually believe that he didn't die.
I'll believe it and then I wake up to discover that my mind is torturing me with what could have been and I lose control of my emotions.
I scream.
Sob.
Hug my knees to my chest.
Rock back and forth.
Tug at my hair.
I pace the length of my shoebox room and throw myself into the padded white walls. I pray for someone or something to come along and take the pain away. I pray for someone or something to erase my memory so that I'll never have to think of Damien again. And so that I'll never have to live with the painful reminder that I am the reason he died.
Damien died for me.
And for love.
And I'm not quite sure what else.
Maybe to prove a point. ~ Lauren Hammond

Until such time as duplications of individual nervous systems can be grown in tissue cultures (at this point no one knows "whose" consciousness they would have), our special identities will always be subject to being hit by a truck or dying in a plane crash. A sudden virus or heart seizure, even in the body's youth, may carry us off. Statistically, looking ahead thousands of years, the chances are that every human and even inanimate form will be broken sooner or later. But the distress felt by men and women today does not arise from the fear of such hazards. Rather, it comes from the certainty of aging and physical degeneration leading to death. It is the fear of losing our powers and being left alone, or in the hands of indifferent nurses, and knowing that the moment must come when we will not see the people we love any more, and everything will go black. ~ Alan Harrington

I was firmly in the out-of-sight-out-of-mind camp, and had cogent, unflinchingly honest declarations I frequently made about losing a shared context, and sentimentalism, and the general faint hearted ness of most people-but I knew there were people in the world who remained friends, for life, with bunk mates from sleepaway camp, and this was that group of people. ~ Gabrielle Hamilton

Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose - to accept defeat. To learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying! ~ Bruce Lee

Success is won by those who believe in winning & then prepare for that moment. Many want to win, but how many prepare? That is the big difference. A sound value system held water then, holds water today, and will hold water in the future. ~ Herb Brooks

When you THROW DIRT at people, you're not doing a thing but LOSING GROUND. ~ Zig Ziglar

Linda Thorson was a great actress with a great body, but she arrived just as 'The Avengers' was losing its appeal. ~ Patrick Macnee

Most people think nothing of losing an hour of sleep for a single night, believing it to be trivial and inconsequential. It is anything but. ~ Matthew Walker

That is why China is not just relying on forced urbanization to produce low-cost labor; it is also investing heavily in the industries of the future. There needs to be investment in growing fields like robotics but also a social framework that makes sure those who are losing their jobs are able to stay afloat long enough to pivot to the industries or positions that offer new possibilities. ~ Alec J. Ross

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.
Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do - and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. ~ Larry Kramer