Opening the book…
Opening the book…
Explore how different traditions approach the same question, from the oldest texts to the screen and the present day. Connections suggest similarities in meaning, not proven influence. Dates describe broad periods of a tradition, rather than the age of each passage.
“Tell me about a failure that shaped you. What did it cost, and what did it give you?”
Setbacks, mistakes, and the possibilities that remain.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, the Sermon on the Mount, and the parables. Foundational to Western moral language.
“And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”
The prodigal son, having wasted everything, comes to his senses and resolves to return home and confess his failure.
“And Dhoulnoun; when he went on his way in anger, and thought that we had no power over him. But in the darkness he cried "There is no God but thou: Glory be unto Thee! Verily, I have been one of the evil doers:" So we he…”
“For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”
“Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, It will not come nigh unto me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gather it little by little.”
Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads — dialogues on duty, action, and self.
“If one Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs Attraction; from attraction grows desire, Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds Recklessness; then the memory--all betrayed-- Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind, Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.”
Krishna traces the causal chain by which unchecked attention to sensory temptation progressively destroys a person's will and character.
“The thirst of a thoughtless man grows like a creeper; he runs from life to life, like a monkey seeking fruit in the forest.”
“Moreover, Son of Pandu! wert thou worst Of all wrong-doers, this fair ship of Truth Should bear thee safe and dry across the sea Of thy transgressions.”
Krishna reassures Arjuna that no past wrongdoing is too great to be overcome by devotion to truth.
“To those who avoid great crimes and scandals but commit only lighter faults, verily, thy Lord will be diffuse of mercy. He well knew you when he produced you out of the earth, and when ye were embryos in your mother's wo…”
Tao Te Ching, attributed to Laozi — terse, paradoxical aphorisms on living with the grain of things.
“People in their conduct of affairs are constantly ruining them when they are on the eve of success. If they were careful at the end, as (they should be) at the beginning, they would not so ruin them.”
“They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maket…”
Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, Of Love, 1625 ↗
“Now-a-days they give up gentleness and are all for being bold; economy, and are all for being liberal; the hindmost place, and seek only to be foremost;--(of all which the end is) death.”
Laozi contrasts the three virtues with their corrupted inversions in contemporary life.
“There is the love of being benevolent without the love of learning;-- the beclouding here leads to a foolish simplicity. There is the love of knowing without the love of learning;-- the beclouding here leads to dissipati…”
Dhammapada and selected sutras — terse, principle-rich verses on suffering, attachment, and right action.
“Not the perversities of others, not their sins of commission or omission, but his own misdeeds and negligences should a sage take notice of.”
“For his own good only shall the guided yield to guidance, and to his own loss only shall the erring err; and the heavy laden shall not be laden with another's load.”
“The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the gambler.”
“the most frequent of external causes is, that the folly of one man, is the fortune of another. For no man prospers so suddenly, as by others' errors.”
Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, Of Fortune, 1625 ↗
Analects of Confucius — sayings on conduct, governance, and moral cultivation.
“To have faults and not to reform them,-- this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults.”
“Most justly have these things happened unto thee: why dost not thou amend? O but thou hadst rather become good to-morrow, than to be so to-day.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.XXI, tr. Meric Casaubon (1634/1635) ↗
“The faults of the superior man are like the eclipses of the sun and moon. He has his faults, and all men see them; he changes again, and all men look up to him.”
“The proud man is commonly too well contented with himself to think that his character requires any amendment. The man who feels himself all-perfect, naturally enough despises all further improvement. His self-sufficiency…”
Greco-Roman school of practical philosophy on virtue, agency, and acceptance. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca.
“Be not discontented, be not disheartened, be not out of hope, if often it succeed not so well with thee punctually and precisely to do all things according to the right dogmata, but being once cast off, return unto them again.”
Marcus counsels himself on perseverance after moral failure, urging return to philosophical practice without self-pity.
“Are you in adversity? Do not mourn in the darkness of solitude, do not regulate your sorrow according to the indulgent sympathy of your intimate friends; return, as soon as possible, to the daylight of the world and of s…”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, Ch. 3 (eighth paragraph), 1759 ↗
“Oh, wretched I, to whom this mischance is happened! nay, happy I, to whom this thing being happened, I can continue without grief; neither wounded by that which is present, nor in fear of that which is to come. Now to conclude; upon all occasion of sorrow remember henceforth to make use of this dogma, that whatsoever i…”
“It should never be forgotten that misfortune, be it great or small, is the element in which we live. But that is no reason why a man should indulge in fretful complaints. Our aim should be to look well about us, to ward…”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, Section 51, tr. T. Bailey Saunders, 1890 ↗
Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) — concise principles for living, distilled from the early rabbinic period.
“An evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred for humankind put a person out of the world.”
Rabbi Joshua identifies the three inner forces most destructive to a person's life.
“It is by the loftiest and strongest instincts, when they break out passionately and carry the individual far above and beyond the average, and the low level of the gregarious conscience, that the self-reliance of the com…”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 201, tr. Helen Zimmern, 1907 ↗
“Envy, lust and [the desire for] honor put a man out of the world.”
“Envy, which is the canker of honor, is best extinguished by declaring a man's self in his ends, rather to seek merit than fame; and by attributing a man's successes, rather to divine Providence and felicity, than to his…”
Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, Of Honor And Reputation, 1625 ↗
Central scripture of Islam. Ethical teachings, parables, and prophetic narratives.
“They will say, 'We were not of those who prayed, And we were not of those who fed the poor, And we plunged into vain disputes with vain disputers, And we rejected as a lie, the day of reckoning, Till the certainty came upon us'—And intercession of the interceders shall not avail them.”
The damned explain the cause of their ruin: neglect of prayer, neglect of the poor, empty argument, and denial — with no rescue available at the end.
“For it is not we who have treated them unjustly, but it was they who were unjust to themselves.”
God responds to the cries of the damned in Hell, stating that their suffering is a consequence of their own choices, not divine injustice.
“It is not God's fault. It is our own fault that we suffer. Whatever we sow that we reap. God does not do anything to punish us.”
Montaigne and Bacon turning the essay into a way of thinking in public — sceptical, personal, unwilling to settle a question it has not tested.
“He that falls obstinate in his courage — he who, for any danger of imminent death, abates nothing of his assurance; who, dying, yet darts at his enemy a fierce and disdainful look, is overcome not by us, but by fortune; he is killed, not conquered; the most valiant are sometimes the most unfortunate. There are defeats…”
Montaigne distinguishes between being killed and being conquered, arguing that true valour can persist even in death and defeat.
“I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters; who have not mer…”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Sounds, 1854 ↗
“Whoever only proposes to himself to remove that which offends him, falls short: for good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse.”
Montaigne warns against the assumption that eliminating a current ill is enough to produce improvement.
“There can be no proper motive for hurting our neighbour, there can be no incitement to do evil to another, which mankind will go along with, except just indignation for evil which that other has done to us. To disturb hi…”
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Sect. II, Chap. II, 1759 ↗
Hume, Smith, Kant and Wollstonecraft asking what we owe each other once reason, rather than revelation, is asked to supply the answer.
“No time can efface the cruel ideas of a man's own foolish conduct, or of affronts, which cowardice or impudence has brought upon him. They still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts, and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most odious colours imaginable.”
Hume describes the lasting inner torment that follows from acting with cowardice or foolishness, arguing that self-reproach for these is as real as for moral failings.
“Later on, when the young soul, tortured by continual disillusions, finally turns suspiciously against itself--still ardent and savage even in its suspicion and remorse of conscience: how it upbraids itself, how impatient…”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 31, tr. Helen Zimmern, 1907 ↗
“The greatest parts without it, as observed by an elegant writer, may be fatal to their owner; as Polyphemus, deprived of his eye, was only the more exposed, on account of his enormous strength and stature.”
Hume on discretion: great natural gifts or abilities, without prudent judgment, only amplify one's vulnerability.
“And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?”
Emerson, Thoreau and Douglass in New England and beyond — self-reliance, conscience against the state, and the moral weight of a life lived deliberately.
“And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?”
Emerson closes with a warning about the self-destruction that awaits gifted people who neglect practical discipline.
“Nevertheless, a man should economize his strength even when he is young. Those infant prodigies--_ingenia praecoda_--the fruit of a hot-house education, who surprise us by their cleverness as children, afterwards turn ou…”
“Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know; that they do not touch him;--but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them…”
Mill, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, each pressing on what an individual owes to the crowd, to suffering, and to their own honesty.
“There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated.”
Nietzsche reflects on the particular anguish of witnessing wasted potential in people of rare capacity.
“And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves _gifts_,—gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non…”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture on The Sick Soul, 1902 ↗
“The consequences of our actions seize us by the forelock, very indifferent to the fact that we have meanwhile "reformed."”
James, Du Bois, Vivekananda and Tagore — psychology, pragmatism and the first modern accounts of living inside more than one world at once.
“It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream; to see the wide vision of empire fade into real ashes and dirt; to feel the pang of the conquered, and yet know that with all the Bad that fell on one black day, something was vanquished that deserved to live, something killed that in justice had not d…”
Du Bois reflects on Atlanta's — and the South's — complicated relationship with its defeated past and the ambiguous victory of the Civil War.
“All this is bitter hard; and many a man and city and people have found in it excuse for sulking, and brooding, and listless waiting.”
Du Bois acknowledges the temptation to dwell in defeat rather than turn toward the future.
The century in which the question was most often put to a wide audience by film. Each line belongs to a larger story, and is quoted with its character, film, and writing credits where available.
“If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it.”
A disgraced coach tells his sprinter that a medal is not what makes a person enough, having learned it the expensive way.
Written by Lynn Siefert, Tommy Swerdlow and Michael Goldberg.
“From failing, you learn. From success, not so much.”
A family celebrates a boy's failed invention, on the grounds that the failure contains more information than the success would have.
Written by Jon Bernstein, Michelle Spitz, Don Hall, Nathan Greno, Aurian Redson, Joe Mateo and Stephen Anderson.
“The new needs friends.”
A critic concedes in print that judging is cheap next to making something, and that the new is what most needs defending.
Written by Brad Bird.
“There is no secret ingredient.”
The film's joke and its argument at once: the special thing was never in the recipe.
Written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger.
“There's no one I'd rather be than me.”
A villain recites a group-therapy creed about accepting the role you were built for, which the film then spends its length complicating.
Written by Phil Johnston and Jennifer Lee.
“The greatest teacher, failure is.”
A teacher returns to tell his former student that what he has to pass on includes, and mostly consists of, what went wrong.
Written by Rian Johnson.
The same question, answered by people who are still working it out.
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