Quote

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

More quotes by Alice Foote MacDougall

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In business everyone is out to grab, to fight, to win. Either you are the under or the over dog. It is up to you to be on top.
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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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 too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble.
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 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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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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... 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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Life means opportunity, and the thing men call death is the last wonderful, beautiful adventure.
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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One must eliminate the traditional and cling to the essential.
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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When one is altering the face of the universe one cannot remember small helpful acts.
Alice Foote MacDougall
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You realize the futility of worry. You learn to hate the small and the little. Life is a pie which you cut in large slices, not grudgingly, not sparingly. You know your limitations and proceed to eliminate them your abilities, and proceed to develop them. You are free.
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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a few hours with Beethoven are more restful than sleep.
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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... 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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... 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