Rejection quotes
539 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside rejection — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Recognize that it is natural and normal to fear rejection. The only thing wrong with it is if you allow the fear to dominate you so that it holds you back from fulfilling your potential in your business."
"Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world."
"The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity."
"A lot of people ask me, 'How did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and jump right into the music industry?' It's because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school. Because in the music industry, if they're gonna say no to you, at least they're gonna be polite about it."
"Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood."
"Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water."
"Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon."
"Rejection is one thing - but rejection from a fool is cruel."
"Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage."
"Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story."
"It seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no. So dont tell me, I might just let it go."
"What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics."
"The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror."
"Don't get discouraged from all the rejection."
"She didn't mean to be unkind, why she even woke me up to say good-bye."
"The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough... is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image."
"I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long."
"There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time."
"Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved."
"Woke the next day and found her note. Love ya, goodbye, that's all she wrote."
