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SUCCESSFUL FAILURES: No man is absolutely or strictly a failure; he is only a failure intermittently. Whatever the level of life on which he happens to be living, he will experience his periodic successes together (though not simultaneously) with his periodic failures. A failure per se, if such a person could exist, would be totally without successes. But to be totally without successes would also mean to be totally without failures, since the former cannot exist without the latter, the former are a consequence of the latter and therefore dependent upon the latter for their existence.

We assume a person to be a failure when he hasn't achieved something he desired, but overlook the fact that he may have achieved something else, if only to disillusion himself with the desire in question. Now many people whom we customarily and perhaps even naively regard as successes on account, for example, of their current wealth, status, fame, etc., may often regard themselves in quite a different light - a light, I mean, in which only they can see, and which exposes, amongst other things, their frustrated ambitions.

For where it may be the ambition of one man to attain fame, a man who is already famous will have other ambitions, some of which he may realize, others of which he may not. But, irrespective of their personal circumstances, both men will experience similar feelings as regards their respective ambitions, since they will be subject to the same conditions - namely those of success and failure.