The Dawn Treader

Group 1 : Success is achievement earned through hard work.

"Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price."
- Vince Lombardi

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work learning from failure."
- General Colin Powell

"Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were."
- David Rockefeller

"My mother drew a distinction between achievement and success. She said that 'achievement is the knowledge that you have studied and worked hard and done the best that is in you. Success is being praised by others, and that's nice, too, but not as important or satisfying. Always aim for achievement and forget about success."
- Helen Hayes

Group 2: Success includes some luck along the way.

"Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves."
- Larry King

"My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil"
- Paul Getty

"I've had enough success for two lifetimes, my success is talent put together with hard work and luck."
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Group 3: Success is being singleminded.

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."
- Abraham Lincoln

"To follow without halt, one aim; there is the secret of success. And success? What is it? I do not find it in the applause of the theater; it lies rather in the satisfaction of accomplishment."
- Anna Pavlova

"The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication."
- Cecil B. DeMille

"We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Group 4: Success is being happy.

"If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all."
- Anna Quindlen

"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
- Bob Dylan

"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."
- Christopher Morley

"To freely bloom - that is my definition of success."
- Gerry Spence,

"Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love."
- David McCullough

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get."
- Dale Carnegie

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."
- Albert Schweitzer

Group 5: Success is overcoming adversity.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
- George S. Patton

Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal.
- Mike Ditka

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Sir Winston Churchill

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas A. Edison

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
- Henry Kissinge

Whenever I hear, 'It can't be done,' I know I'm close to success.
- Michael Flatley, (Lord of the Dance) quoted by Eric Celeste

You always pass failure on the way to success.
- Mickey Rooney

A minute's success pays the failure of years.
- Robert Browning

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
- Confucius

Group 6: Random but interesting thoughts

"Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day."
- Arthur Miller

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
- Mark Twain

"Underpromise; overdeliver."
- Tom Peters

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."
- Woody Allen

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."
- Albert Einstein

"A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up."
- Albert Schweitzer

"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
- Aristotle

"Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings."
- Arthur Rubinstein

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
- Bill Cosby

"Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life."
- Dr. David M. Burns

"Success didn't spoil me, I've always been insufferable."
- Fran Lebowitz

"Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his."
- Franklin P. Jones

"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite."
- G. K. Chesterton

"Men are born to succeed, not fail."
- Henry David Thoreau

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it."
- W. C. Fields

"Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good."
- Joe Paterno

"I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."
- George Bernard Shaw

"The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
- Theodore Roosevelt

"Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time."
- Arnold H. Glasow

"Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other."
- Erma Bombeck

"I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker"
- Helen Keller

"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."
- T. S. Eliot

Do any of these resonate with you?  Do any seem really off base?  Is T.S. Eliot right about success being relative, or is there an objective definition of success?  Which is your favorite?

Sound off in the comments.

Next up ... what do prominent Christian thinkers say about success?