defeat

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?

She smiled.  She knew she was dying.  But it did not matter any longer.  She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now.  She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it.  Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little hole that dropped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came.  A moment or an eternity- did it matter?  Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you.

When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites-to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance-there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.

Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

You must think of failure and defeat as the springboards to new achievements or to the next level of accomplishment.

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Recipe for greatness - To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great.

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.