Wise Quotes about Defeat

It's one of life's great paradoxes ...
Accepting with gratitude whatever life throws at us
is critical to happiness.
Yet without a goal and commitment, life lose much of its value.
The best we can do in the face of this paradox
is to play to win, but be cheerful in defeat
and ready to play again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The problems of victory are more agreeable
than those of defeat,
but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill

Life is truly known only to those who suffer,
lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
- Anais Nin

Far better is it to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though chequered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the grey twilight
that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Consciously adopt the mindset of a young child,
to whom all of life is a grand adventure.
Life is your playground.
Fashion grand castles and sweeping boulevards,
defeat fire-breathing dragons,
leap tall buildings in a single bound.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you find your path, you must not be afraid.
You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes.
Disappointment, defeat, and despair are
the tools God uses to show us the way.
- Paulo Coelho

Laugh at yourself and at life.
Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity,
but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain,
cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective
that seemingly terrible defeat and worry
with laughter at your predicaments,
thus freeing your mind to think clearly toward the solution
that is certain to come. Never take yourself too seriously.
- Og Mandino

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
- John F. Kennedy

There's a couple of things they don't teach you
in Harvard Business School,
one is how to cope with defeat,
the other is how to handle a shotgun.
- The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside,
is that they cannot win and their participants know it.
Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary
because it invites defeat.
It involves an emotional catharsis,
but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

Trust yourself. Only you can live your life.
Only you can taste your victories.
Only you can suffer the sting of your defeats.
Make your own choices, and accept your own consequences -
for better or worse.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Know that darkness is merely the absence of light.
You can be the small candle that defeats the vast darkness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Being defeated is often a temporary condition.
Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant

Intent is what can make a man succeed
when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.
- Carlos Castaneda

If you have no confidence in self,
you are twice defeated in the race of life.
With confidence, you have won even before you have started.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love
will have the final word in reality.
That is why right, temporarily defeated,
is stronger than evil triumphant.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell

The life of inner peace,
being harmonious and without stress,
is the easiest type of existence.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Face the facts of being what you are,
for that is what changes what you are.
- Soren Kierkegaard

We all live with the objective of being happy;
our lives are all different and yet the same.
- Anne Frank

The mind constantly chatters.
That chatter winds up being the force
that drives us much of the day in terms of what we do,
what we react to, and how we feel.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

One of the surest ways to cause
yourself great suffering
is to insist upon being right -
to demand that all others view life
exactly as you view it.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What I recognized is that you can't put it together.
It's already together, and what you have to do
is experience it being together.
- Werner Erhard

The truth is a snare:
you cannot have it, without being caught.
You cannot have the truth
in such a way that you catch it,
but only in such a way that it catches you.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Loving, hating, having expectations:
all these are attachments.
Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.
- Lao Tzu

A man who as a physical being
is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and
discovers that the source is within him.
- Soren Kierkegaard

The essence of being human is that one
does not seek perfection.
- George Orwell

Far from idleness being the root of all evil,
it is rather the only true good.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Any human being who is becoming independent of conditionings,
of religions, scriptures, prophets and messiahs, has arrived home.
He has found the treasure which was hidden in his own being.
- Osho

Being wakeful in each and every moment of your life is meditation.
The simplest definition of meditation is:
when seeing, just see; when hearing, just hear.
- Josh Baran

It is wonderful to have Faith,
but don't confuse trust with being gullible.
Balance trust with conscious thought.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

An idea that is not dangerous is
unworthy of being called an idea at all.
- Oscar Wilde

Life is NOT "Supposed to be Fair."
Know that there is no single way that life is "supposed" to be.
Demanding that life meet our expectations
is a sure fire recipe for a miserable existence.
Life is a game with no rules.
Life just happens to us regardless of our best intentions.
Our only path to happiness lies in being open
to receiving whatever life throws at us -
with Gratitude. Have NO Expectations of life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off
a portion of one's being,
but by integration of the contraries.
- Carl Jung

Mindfulness means being awake.
It means being aware of what you are doing.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

Language... has created the word "loneliness"
to express the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word "solitude"
to express the glory of being alone.
- Paul Tillich

Health is the greatest possession.
Contentment is the greatest treasure.
Confidence is the greatest friend.
Non-being is the greatest joy.
- Lao Tzu

Believe in yourself, and trust your own wisdom
rather than being swayed by the opinions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When I'm trusting and being myself...
everything in my life reflects this
by falling into place easily, often miraculously.
- Shakti Gawain

We deem those happy, who from the experience of life
have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
- Carl Jung

Courage is the art of being the only one
who knows you're scared to death.
- Earl Wilson

May your spirit soar throughout the vast cathedral of your being.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you are eating, eat totally -
chew totally, taste totally, smell totally.
Touch your bread, feel the texture.
Smell the bread, smell the flavor.
Chew it, let it dissolve into your being,
and remain conscious - and you are meditating.
And then meditation is not separate from life.
- Osho

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing
a human being to a purpose.
- Albert Schweitzer

All the Buddhas of all the ages have been
telling you a very simple fact:
Be - don't try to become.
Within these two words, be and becoming,
your whole life is contained.
Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.
- Osho

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will.
Its seat is in the heart,
and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

The only good luck many great men ever had was
being born with the ability and determination to overcome bad luck.
- Channing Pollock

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.
- The Buddha

The past is no more and the future is not yet.
The only right person is one who lives moment to moment,
whose arrow is directed to the moment,
who is always here and now; wherever he is,
his whole consciousness, his whole being,
is involved in the reality of here and in the reality of now.
- Osho

You are never given a wish without also
being given the power to make it true.
You may have to work for it, however.
- Richard Bach

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting
on his past actions and their motives -
of approving of some and disapproving of others.
- Charles Darwin

Until you'll willing to look foolish,
you'll never have the possibility of being great.
- Cher

Each of us dwells in a cathedral of our own BEing
that is created vast enough to encompass Unity with all creation.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Do the small things of life with a relaxed awareness.
When you are eating, eat totally -
chew totally, taste totally, smell totally.
Touch your bread, feel the texture.
Smell the bread, smell the flavor.
Chew it, let it dissolve into your being.
- Osho

The greatest discovery of any generation
is that a human being
can alter his life by
altering his attitude
- William James

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Wisdom Quotes