The Right to Fail

Excerpt from The Essence of Success
by Earl Nightingale

 Has life ever shown you that the right to fail is as important as the right to succeed? If we didn't have bad weather, we would never appreciate sunny days. One hardly ever values his good health until he becomes ill. And I have never known a successful man or woman whose success did not hinge on some failure or another.

There is and old saying that goes, "It is impossible to succeed without suffering. If you are successful and have not suffered, someone has suffered for you; and if you are suffering without succeeding, it is so that you may succeed later or that someone may succeed after you. But there is no success without suffering."

Success in the world, any kind of success, is like a college degree. It can be earned only by following a certain course of action for a definite period of time. It is impossible for substantial success to be easy.

Successful people are dreamers who have found a dream too exciting, too important, to remain in the realm of fantasy. Day by day, hour by hour, they toil in the service of their dream until they can see it with their eyes and touch it with their hands.