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Success is an absurd, erratic thing. She arrives when one least expects her and after she has come may depart again almost because of a whim.

Alice Foote MacDougall

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Alice Foote MacDougall
Age: 77 †
Born: 1867
Born: March 2
Died: 1945
Died: February 10
Writer
New York City
New York
Absurd
Least
Almost
Success
Erratic
May
Depart
Come
Arrives
Thing
Expects
Whim

More quotes by Alice Foote MacDougall

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Life is beset by many annoyances, and those that stand out above all are the life- insurance and advertising agents.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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for the poor the whole world is a self-constituted critic your smallest action is open to debate. No secret place of your soul is safe from invasion.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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That is the wearisome part of business - there is no peace, no sense of certain, permanent achievement, no stability. The unexpected, and usually the awful, is forever happening.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Poverty is relative, and the lack of food and of the necessities of life is not necessarily a hardship. Spiritual and social ostracism, the invasion of your privacy, are what constitute the pain of poverty
Alice Foote MacDougall
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To me life means the growing of a soul. I do not know why this duty is imposed upon us. I merely know that it is, and I feel that we are given much latitude of free will.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Despising cowardice in others, I wished to prove myself no coward. Believing in the good, the gentle, the beautiful things of life, I addressed myself to the sweet duty of keeping these attributes for my children's sake and my own. And in striving to provide a living for them, I found a success beyond my wildest dreams.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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For too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Work becomes at once a delight and a tyrant. For even when the time comes and you can relax, you hardly know how.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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There is romance in coffee. It comes from the ends of the earth, and goes to the far corners of man's habitation.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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I simply don't believe in failure. In itself, it doesn't exist. We create it. We make ourselves fail.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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a few hours with Beethoven are more restful than sleep.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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... hunger and cold, ill-health and pain are nothing. They pass. The thing that remains is ignorant criticism, well-meaning but futile advice, the contempt of a subordinate, the feelings of the underdog.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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One must eliminate the traditional and cling to the essential.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same dangers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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... overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This vanity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Perhaps nothing in all my business has helped me more than faith in my fellow man. From the very first I felt confident that I could trust the great, friendly public. So I told it quite simply what I thought, what I felt, what I was trying to do. And the response was quick, sure, and immediate.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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When one is altering the face of the universe one cannot remember small helpful acts.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Success of life depends upon keeping one's mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Not only is orderliness an economy it produces rest.
Alice Foote MacDougall