Failing Quotes - Page 37

• Men are not made religious by performing certain actions which are externally good, but they must first have righteous principles, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.

  Martin Luther

  Religious, Failure, Men

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• Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. Ifwe are to continue talking about "data" in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole.

  John Dewey

  Talking, Data, Justice

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Kurtz (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930”, p.250, SIU Press

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• If we fail to meet our problems here, no one else in the world will do so. If we fail, the heart goes out of progressives throughout the world.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Heart, Democracy, World

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• That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.

  Herman Melville

  Dog, Men, Rejection

  Herman Melville (1996). “Pierre: or, The Ambiguities”, p.296, Penguin

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• When talent fails, indignation writes the verse.

  Juvenal

  Writing, Talent, Indignation

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• Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Mother, Children, Father

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Let my muse
  Fail of thy former helps, and only use
  Her inadulterate strength. What's done by me
  Hereafter shall smell of the lamp, not thee.

  Robert Herrick

  Wine, Smell, Poetry

  1648 'His Fare-well to Sack'.

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• It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.

  John Dos Passos

  Attitude, Party, Believe

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• With a full century of contrary proof in our possession and despite our demonstrated capacity for cooperative teamwork, some among us seem to accept the shibboleth of an unbridgeable gap between those who hire and those who are employed. We miserably fail to challenge the lie that what is good for management is necessarily bad for labor; that for one side to profit, the other must be depressed. Such distorted doctrine is false and foreign to the American scene where common ideals and purpose permit us a common approach toward the common good.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Teamwork, Lying, Challenges

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• When a tongue fails to send forth appropriate shafts, there might be a word to act as healer of these.

  Aeschylus

  Speech, Might, Tongue

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• The history of the world, as it is written and handed down by word of mouth, often fails us completely; but man's intuitive capacity, though it often misleads, does lead, does not ever abandon one.

  Franz Kafka

  Love, Men, Doe

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Writing, Hands, Choices

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• Jesus said, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). We must honestly face the question, "Am I willing to give up a certain practice or habit that is keeping me from holiness?" It is at this point of commitment that most of us fail. We prefer to dally with sin, to try to play with it a little without getting too deeply involved.

  Jerry Bridges

  Jesus, Giving Up, Commitment

  Jerry Bridges (2016). “The Pursuit of Holiness”, p.72, NavPress

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• Words fail, there are times when even they fail.

  Samuel Beckett

  Time, Language

  Samuel Beckett (2013). “Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts”, p.26, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.

  Fay Weldon

  Children, Order, People

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• What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.

  William Howard Taft

  Party, Fighting, People

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• Crushed to earth and rising again is an author's gymnastic. Once he fails to struggle to his feet and grab his pen, he will contemplate a fact he should never permit himself to face: that in all probability books have been written, are being written, will be written, better than anything he has done, is doing, or will do.

  Fannie Hurst

  Perseverance, Struggle, Book

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• Tis a barbarous temper, and a sign of a very ill nature, to take delight in shocking any one: and, on the contrary, it is the mark of an amiable and a beneficent temper, to say all the kind things one can, without flattery or playing the hypocrite,--and what never fails of procuring the love and esteem of every one; which, next to doing good to a deserving object who wants it, is one of the greatest pleasures of this life.

  Samuel Richardson

  Hypocrite, Want, Next

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• A word can be transformed into a coulour, light, a smell; it is the writer's task to use it in such a way that it serves, never fails, can never be ignored.

  Knut Hamsun

  Light, Smell, Tasks

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• Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.

  Frank Pittman

  Couple, Cheer, Brass Bands

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• Shakespeare's so bloody difficult, and I don't like failure. You can fail on film, but there's nobody actually there in the flesh to watch you failing.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Failure, Watches, Flesh

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• To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity.

  Don DeLillo

  Home, Errors, Stupidity

  1982 James Axton. The Names, ch.3.

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• No other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. None. Here in America, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. The murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. And there's nothing inevitable about it. It comes about because of decisions we make or fail to make. And it falls upon us to make it different.

  Barack Obama

  Fall, Gun, America

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• If the Russians have gone too far in subjecting the child and his peer group to conformity to a single set of values imposed by the adult society, perhaps we have reached the point of diminishing returns in allowing excessive autonomy and in failing to utilize the constructive potential of the peer group in developing social responsibility and consideration for others.

  Urie Bronfenbrenner

  Children, Responsibility, Adults

  Urie bronfenbrenner (1978). “2 Wrlds Childhood”, Pocket Books

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• The good enough mother, owing to her deep empathy with her infant, reflects in her face his feelings; this is why he sees himselfin her face as if in a mirror and finds himself as he sees himself in her. The not good enough mother fails to reflect the infant's feelings in her face because she is too preoccupied with her own concerns, such as her worries over whether she is doing right by her child, her anxiety that she might fail him.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Mother, Children, Mirrors

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