“Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed.”
People who lack an achievement may understand its value more intensely because distance and deprivation make the desire clearer.
Opening line of Poem 112; Dickinson links desire with the sharpness of perceived value.
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.”
Kipling’s speaker recommends maintaining steadiness toward both success and failure rather than allowing either outcome to determine one’s character or judgment.
“If—,” in Rewards and Fairies, Project Gutenberg #556. The poem presents a period ideal of masculine self-command through a sequence of conditional tests; the stored lines are literary and moral rhetoric, not a requirement to suppress normal emotion.
“Slow but steady wins the race.”
Steady progress can defeat greater natural speed when the faster competitor becomes careless, distracted, or overconfident.
Moral printed after “The Hare and the Tortoise” in George Fyler Townsend’s translation of Aesop’s fables.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
Adversity is presented as capable of yielding insight or value even when the experience itself is unwelcome.
As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1, Duke Senior; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 24 / Wikisource scan leaf 36. “Sweet are the uses of adversity” occurs in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden reflection on exile, winter and the lessons he claims to find outside court life. It remains fictional dramatic speech rather than Shakespeare’s autobiographical advice or a modern psychological claim about hardship.
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.”
Failure can expose what does not work and force closer observation, turning setbacks into information that uncomplicated success may never reveal.
Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage follows Charles James Fox’s contrast between early success and perseverance after failure, then leads into examples of discoveries and learning produced through mistakes and failed attempts.
“The desire of the child to attain an end which he knows, leads him to correct himself.”
A clear goal can support self-correction because the learner can compare the result with the intended end and revise without waiting for every error to be externally identified.
Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook, discussion of self-correcting didactic material. Project Gutenberg #29635. Montessori immediately describes the child’s own intelligence, rather than the teacher, as detecting and correcting the error.
“The readiness is all.”
The emphasis is not on controlling every outcome but on meeting what comes with preparedness and acceptance.
Act 5, Scene 2.
