John Gardner Quotes

Everyone fails. [The professional boxer and world heavyweight champion] Joe Louis said 'Everyone has to figure to get beat some time.' The question isn't did you fail, but did you pick yourself up and move ahead?

"And there is one other little question: Did you collaborate in your own defeat? A lot of people do. Learn not to.

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

There's a myth that learning is for young people. But as the proverb says, 'It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.' The middle years are great, great learning years. Even the years past the middle years. I took on a new job after my 77th birthday – and I'm still learning. Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask 'What is it trying to teach me?' The lessons aren't always happy ones, but they keep coming.

Children of that age often fall downstairs, you did. Twice. You only worry if there's silence when they reach the bottom.