But He Did Lose

Sunday, July 18, 2021 – But He Did Lose 

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once. ~ Samuel Butler

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less. ~ Paul Brown

The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated. ~ Will Rogers

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It’s authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys. ~ Thomas Frank

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled, even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty. ~ John Lennon

Everyone is a loser. Winners are just losers with more patience. ~ George Hammond

Hope is the raw material of losers. ~ Fernando Flores

All losers are romantics. It’s what keeps us from blowing our brains out. ~ Richard Kadrey

The taste of defeat has a richness of experience all its own. ~ Bill Bradley

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. ~ Elisabeth Bishop

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. ~ Anais Nin

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose. ~ Charles Bukowski

About the only time losing is more fun than winning is when you’re fighting temptation. ~ Tom Wilson

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight. ~ Marcus Aurelius

If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything. ~ Bill Lyon

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. ~ Saul Bellow

All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity are easy. Stay away from easy. ~ Scott Alexander

Southerners can never resist a losing cause. ~ Margaret Mitchell

After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down. ~ Barbara Cartland

If you’re old and you lose, they say you’re outmoded. If you’re young and you lose, they say you’re green. So don’t lose. ~ Terry Brennan

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~ Ludwig Borne

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top aren’t always defeats and victories for the fellows at the bottom. ~ Bertolt Brecht

If you are losing a tug of war with a tiger, give him the rope before he gets to your arm. You can always buy a new rope. ~ Max Gunther

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist. ~ Queen Victoria

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. ~ Michael de Montaigne

Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know. ~ William Saroyan

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake. ~ Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

There really is no such thing as failure. There is only the rearrangement of plans and surrender of ego. ~ Susan Falter-Barns

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. ~ Robert Frost

Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. ~ Felix Frankfurter

The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be. ~ Raymond Chandler

Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe. ~ Marcus Cole

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. ~ Oscar Wilde

In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness, with what is strange. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all. ~ William Goodman

Life’s not fair. It’s only short. ~ Hank Ryan

You could say to the universe this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn’t it? Sorry. ~ Terry Pratchett

What is hateful to thyself do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. ~ Hillel

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth. ~ H. L. Mencken

I never thought about losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. ~ Muhammad Ali

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. ~ William E. Gladstone

The central conservative truth is that it is culture not politics that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Liberal and conservative have lost their meaning in America. I represent the distracted center. ~ Jon Stewart

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand. ~ Baruch Spinoza

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates. ~ Richard M. Nixon

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. ~ Aldous Huxley

Losing feels worse than winning feels good. ~ Vin Scully

I never lost a game. I just ran out of time. ~ Bobby Layne

Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing. ~ George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance

If you learn from a loss, you have not lost. ~ Austin O’Malley

In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity. ~ Winston Churchill

It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies. ~ Arthur Calwell