Failure, it occurred to him, was the secular equivalent of sin. Modern secular man was born into a world whose moral framework was composed not of laws and duties, but of tests and comparisons. There were no absolute outside standards, so standards had to generate themselves from within, relativistically. One's natural sense of inadequacy could be kept at bay only pious acts of repeated successfulness. And failure was more terrifying than sin. Sin could be repented of by an act of volition; failure could not be disposed of so easily. Michael Frayn
About This Quote

Failure is no longer the worse thing in the world. People are failing in life due to their own mistakes, but it doesn’t mean that they will fail forever. A person cannot be defined by what they have not done, what they have failed or what they have been unsuccessful at doing. A better person would never give up on their dreams, nor would they allow themselves to fall into a pit of despair because of a failure.

Source: Towards The End Of The Morning

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Hate the sin, love the sinner. - Mahatma Gandhi
  2. The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff. - Criss Jami
  3. When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life. That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother had been alive. That had been her sin. And this was her penance.... - Melina Marchetta
  4. When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  5. The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-, ’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a [person] trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to... - Mary Daly
More Quotes By Michael Frayn
  1. Odd, though, all these dealings of mine with myself. First I’ve agreed a principle withmyself, now I’m making out a case to myself, and debating my own feelings andintentions with myself. Who is this self, this phantom internal partner, with whom I’mentering into all these...
  2. Odd, though, all these dealings of mine with myself. First I’ve agreed a principle with myself, now I’m making out a case to myself, and debating my own feelings and intentions with myself. Who is this self, this phantom internal partner, with whom I’m entering...
  3. Failure, it occurred to him, was the secular equivalent of sin. Modern secular man was born into a world whose moral framework was composed not of laws and duties, but of tests and comparisons. There were no absolute outside standards, so standards had to generate...
  4. We can't stop reading. Compulsively we find ourselves reading significance into dreams (we construct a science upon it); into tea-leaves and the fall of cards. We look up at the shifting vapours in the sky, and see faces, lost cities, defeated armies. Isolated in the...
  5. Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your...
Related Topics