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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
Thing
Expects
Whim
Absurd
Least
Almost
Success
Erratic
May
Depart
Come
Arrives

More quotes by Alice Foote MacDougall

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a few hours with Beethoven are more restful than sleep.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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When one is working out a problem ... life becomes duality. One's ego transacts the ordinary routine of things, as if the mind had an upper and lower story and the regular performance of the day's duties moved and motivated on the upper floor, while down below the all-absorbing problem toils silently, forcefully, toward its solution.
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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Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations.... Imagination concerning the world's wants and the individual's needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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... the deep experience of the lonely climb on the mountain of success brings a wealth beyond power to compute. To you all suffering is understandable and your heart opens wide in sympathy.
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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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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I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training.
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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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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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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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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... 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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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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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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For too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble.
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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One must eliminate the traditional and cling to the essential.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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Not only is orderliness an economy it produces rest.
Alice Foote MacDougall