The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

About Confucius

Portrait of Confucius

Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BCE), born Kong Qiu, was a Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. Much of the shared cultural heritage of the Sinosphere originates in the philosophy and teachings of Confucius. His philosophical teachings, called...

More quotations from Confucius

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?… While you do not know life, how can you know about death?

Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

More quotations tagged with “success”

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

—Christopher Lasch

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

The leaders we revere and the businesses that last are generally not the result of a narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose. That's the hallmark of real success. The other trapping of success might be the by product of this larger mission, but it can't be the central thing.

—Barack Obama

That's what building a body of work is all about. It's about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy. It's about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star, because the one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative. It deepens and expands with each day you give your best. You may have setbacks and you may have failures, but you're not done. You haven't even started.

—Barack Obama

I've come to embrace the notion that I haven't done enough in my life. I've come to confirm that one's title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one's life has been led. No matter how much you've done or how successful you've been, there's always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.

—Barack Obama

History

11 Jul 2015 Added