Personal Failure Quotes

One thing I do believe is I'm a believer in the presence of God. I believe that God is close. Whether it's in joy, pain or personal failure, I believe that God is close. That much I feel in my life. ~ David Gregory

If you ever want to get a sense of your own personal failure, look at yourself trying to get across a point that nobody is listening to and the situation gets worse and worse. ~ Robert Reich

Everything you've told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you've generated personal failure, because you can't do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can't be pin-pointed. ~ David Allen

Self-harm is not an uncommon experience, nor is it a shameful defect or personal failure, it happended to me because I wasn't able to manage intense emotional distress. ~ Ruby Elliot

And when, after fifteen years of bingeing, barfing, starving, needles and tubes and terror and rage, and medical crises and personal failure and loss after loss - when, after all this, you are in your early twenties and staring down a vastly abbreviated life expectancy, and the eating disorder still takes up half your body, half your brain, with its invisible eroding force, when you have spent the majority of your life sick, when you do not yet know what it means to be 'well,' or 'normal,' when you doubt that those words even have meaning anymore, there are still no answers. You will die young, and you have no way to make sense of that fact.
You have this: You are thin. ~ Marya Hornbacher

I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. ~ William J. Clinton

In baseball, even the best hitters fail seven of ten times, and of those seven failures there are different reasons why. Some are personal failures, others are losses to the pitcher. You just get beat. In those personal failures, I felt I could have done better. ~ Ichiro Suzuki

it is again: that Hindu belief that all of life is maya, illusion. Once we see life as a game, no more consequential than a game of chess, then the world seems a lot lighter, a lot happier. Personal failure becomes "as small a cause for concern as playing the role of loser in a summer theater performance," writes Huston Smith in his book The World's Religions. If it's all theater, it doesn't matter which role you play, as long as you realize it's only a role. Or, as Alan Watts said: "A genuine person is one who knows he is a big act and does it with complete zip. ~ Eric Weiner

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. ~ Jessica Valenti

Women tend to vote the economic interests of their families and to speak out on family economic issues. For men, there's often much more focus on the idea of personal failure: "If I'm not winning this great economic game, it must be my fault." ~ Elizabeth Warren

No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home. ~ Amelia Gray

Stringent standards of self-evaluation [can] make otherwise objective successes seem to be personal failures ~ Albert Bandura

All the logic in the world could not blunt the pain. Logic could not blunt her terrible sense of personal failure. Only time would do those things, and time would do an imperfect job. ~ Stephen King

Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick. It ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Action learning particularly obliges subjects to become aware of their own value systems, by demanding that the real problems tackled carry some risk of personal failure. ~ Reg Revans

The worldling will not face his colossal inner blah. He multiplies experiences in an unending and desperate attempt to numb his spirit. It hurts so much not to have attained the very reason for his existence, an immersion in God, that he uses things as a narcotic. The worldling pursues prestige or comfort or wealth or sexual encounters not because they basically satisfy him (if they did, once would be enough) but because they dull his inner aching. Always and eventually he is faced with his personal failure. But the sight if it is so revolting and painful, he dives once again into the aspirin sea of frantic pursuits. ~ Thomas Dubay

I told her how frustrating it is to be a Christian in America, and how frustrated I am with not only the church's failures concerning human rights, but also my personal failure to contribute to the solution. ~ Donald Miller

At the end of the day I have always seen the end of my relationships as a personal failure. There is nothing ever pretty in saying goodbye. ~ Elisabetta Canalis

It's forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view. ~ Kelly McGonigal

The knowledge of personal failure ... is the invaluable predicate of all honest compassion. ~ Anne Truitt

PARANOID PERSONALITY The paranoid defense is a posture developed to cope with excessive shame. The paranoid person becomes hypervigilant, expecting and waiting for the betrayal and humiliation he knows is coming. The paranoid person interprets innocent events as personally threatening and constantly lives on guard. Harry Stack Sullivan described the paranoid as "feeling hopelessly defective." The sources of the paranoid's own sense of deficiency are found elsewhere. It's as if the inner eyes of shaming, contempt and disdain are projected outward. Wrongdoings, mistakes and other instances of personal failure cannot be owned by the paranoid-type personality. They are disowned and transferred from the inner self to others. ~ John Bradshaw

A true leader is responsible for his followers who have reposed their faith in his leadership. If an ordinary man fails, it is a personal failure. But when a leader fails, he shatters the entire ideologies, principles and morale of all those who followed him. The impact is much bigger and stakes are higher. ~ Awdhesh Singh

The Mommy Mystique tells us that we are the luckiest women in the world
the freest, with the most choices, the broadest horizons, the best luck, and the most wealth. It says we have the knowledge and know-how to make "informed decisions" that will guarantee the successful course of our children's lives. It tells us that if we choose badly our children will fall prey to countless dangers
from insecure attachment to drugs to kidnapping to a third-rate college. And if this happens, if our children stray from the path toward happiness and success, we will have no one but ourselves to blame. Because to point fingers out at society, to look beyond ourselves, is to shirk "personal responsibility." To admit that we cannot do everything ourselves, that indeed we need help
and help on a large, systematic scale
is tantamount to admitting personal failure. ~ Judith Warner

A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn't married, we just think he hasn't come around to making his pick. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It's a hell of a thing, taking away a man's voice.
Dr. Ren had said this to me on the night Harrison Paine woke up. That was all he'd said about the man, then or since, that hadn't been purely clinical, but I knew it weighed on him. I'd worked with him long enough to learn that he felt personal failure any time he couldn't save the world.
Maybe that was part of the reason I found myself gravitating to Harrison Paine's room. I couldn't give the singer his voice back, but maybe if I worked hard enough, I could relieve some of the pressure Dr. Ren felt. Maybe if I worked hard enough, I could make Harrison give me one of his rare, beautiful smiles ~ Peter Styles

I read about the rising tide of illegal drug cartels moving their products from more developed countries to the United States, while using the Caribbean as a conduit. My home is Jamaica, and I'm a former international flight attendant, so I began to think about how I could use my personal background to spotlight issues surrounding the illicit drug trade, while also drawing in readers with a captivating story. ~ Norma Jennings

I feel, in the end, as if everything I've done has been a failure. ~ Jonathan Kozol

How many of you have broken no laws this month? That's the kind of society I want to build. I want a guarantee - with physics and mathematics, not with laws - that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications. ~ John Gilmore

Science is complex and chilling. The mathematical language of science is understood by very few. The vistas it presents are scary-an enormous universe ruled by chance and impersonal rules, empty and uncaring, ungraspable and vertiginous. How comfortable to turn instead to a small world, only a few thousand years old, and under God's personal; and immediate care; a world in which you are His peculiar concern. ~ Isaac Asimov

How many ills, how many infirmities, does man owe to his excesses, his ambition – in a word, to the indulgence of his various passions! He who should live soberly in all respects, who should never run into excesses of any kind, who should be always simple in his tastes, modest in his desires, would escape a large proportion of the tribulations of human life. It is the same with regard to spirit-life, the sufferings of which are always the consequence of the manner in which a spirit has lived upon the earth. In that life undoubtedly he will no longer suffer from gout or rheumatism; but his wrong-doing down here will cause him to experience other sufferings no less painful. We have seen that those sufferings are the result of the links which exist between a spirit and matter; that the more completely he is freed from the influence of matter – in other words, the more dematerialized he is – the fewer are the painful sensations experienced by him. It depends, therefore, on each of us to free ourselves from the influence of matter by our action in this present life. Man possesses free-will, and, consequently, the power of electing to do or not to do. Let him conquer his animal passions; let him rid himself of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride; let him throw off the yoke of selfishness; let him purify his soul by cultivating noble sentiments; let him do good; let him attach to the things of this world only the degree of importance which they deserve – and he will, even under his presen ~ Allan Kardec

We envy those whose possessions or achievements are a reflection on our own. They are our neighbors and equals. It is they, above all who make plain the nature of our failure. ~ Helmut Schoeck

The failure of modern culture lies not in its principle of individualism, not in the idea that moral virtue is the same as the pursuit of self-interest, but in the deterioration of the meaning of self-interest; not in the fact that people are too much concerned with their self-interest, but that they are not concerned enough with the interest of their real self; not in the fact that they are too selfish, but that they do not love themselves. ~ Erich Fromm

To accept grace is to admit failure, a step we are hesitant to take. We opt to impress God with how good we are rather than confessing how great he is. ~ Max Lucado

I'm done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed. ~ Ned Vizzini

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure. ~ John C. Maxwell

If I had my way, the trip's every moment would be a Moment - ripe with meaning, worthy of at least a sidebar or infographic in my personal history book. I looked back to the road, followed the pavement ~ Brian Benson

I was raised on the struggle of elders - iron collars, severed feet, the rifle of dirty Harriet, and down through the years, the Muslims and regal Malcolm. But mostly what I saw around me was rank dishonor: cable and Atari plugged into every room, juvenile parenting, niggers sporting kicks with price tags that looked like mortgage bills. The Conscious among us knew the whole race was going down, that we'd freed ourselves from slavery and Jim Crow but not the great shackling of minds. The hoppers had no picture of the larger world. We thought all our battles were homegrown and personal, but, like an evil breeze at our back, we felt invisible hands at work, like someone else was still tugging at levers and pulling strings. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You need not spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But hold on! If this is true then why have so many among us apparently elected to live in this manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that had any choices ~ Og Mandino

The moment you believe your experience is caused by other people, you are giving them your power. ~ Jeanne McElvaney

Failure
Because God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry
All the great courts were quiet in the sun,
And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls. ~ Rupert Brooke

What I do is based on powers we all have inside us; the ability to endure; the ability to love, to carry on, to make the best of what we have - and you don't have to be a 'Superman' to do it. ~ Christopher Reeve

Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable. ~ John Wooden

Just as a pool of water cannot reflect the sky overhead when it is restless and disturbed, so we can never get a perfect vision of the Divine, and show it to others when we are disturbed with human thoughts and personal problems. It is only when we are quite still and receptive that God can think His thoughts into us and use us for His purposes. ~ Alice Hegan Rice

You cannot grow and expand your capabilities without running the risk of failure. ~ Dean Karnazes

A life which does not go into action is a failure. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

The truly great ones attained personal fulfillment. Some of them publicly announced that they were done and ready to leave the planet. ~ Assegid Habtewold

I didn't want the public in my personal life at all - I thought that people might perceive me as too normal, and I'd lose that larger-than-life rock star persona. You've got to protect that! ~ Vanilla Ice

A person who has power has an open mind. Their mind is open and they can see on other levels. Seeing is a quality that comes to a person who has personal power. ~ Frederick Lenz

I think if you look at Andre then and now, you look at two different models. Of course it's personal preference, I think Andre now is a great role model for the kids. He has started training differently than he was before, and so on and so on. ~ Ivan Lendl

It is not good to talk about rude things you have done willingly or mistakenly. We have to forget those things after telling about it to someone virtues. Then we have another chance to correct us. Repeatedly reminding those things will give us lot of bad results. Instead it is better to talk about best things you have done. ~ Muditha Champika

I feel that talent means little unless coupled with an insatiable desire to give an excellent personal demonstration of ability ... talent must be in company with a capacity for unlimited effort which provides the power that eventually hurdles the difficulties that would frustrate lukewarm enthusiasm. ~ Andrew Loomis

My personal style is relaxed. ~ Narciso Rodriguez

(Man) fancied that by masquerading in leaves and flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. We may smile at his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long series of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed to failure, that mane learned from experience the futility of some of his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others. After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have failed and which continue to be repeated merely because the operator is unaware of their failure. ~ James George Frazer

You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas. ~ Allen Ginsberg

When you are working well with your
energy, you are also making the best
expression of your personal power ... By
reading your own energy, by becoming
aware of the lens through which you see
your world, you can change your mind and change your life. ~ Caroline Myss

Sigma Chi was a learning experience for me in personal growth, in finding out more about myself, in shaping my life more effectively, and in directing my energies more efficiently. All of those things were heavily influenced by my Sigma Chi experience. There is no question that that has had a tremendous impact on my career, profesionally and on my life. ~ Merlin Olsen

Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand. ~ Pema Chodron

If we want to grow as teachers
we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives
risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract. ~ Parker J. Palmer

Our middle class majority, deeply in personal debt, elects political leaders who increase our benefits. Then we vote them out because we dislike the soaring national debt. ~ Oliver DeMille