Original artwork, not a still
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is a line about failure as the normal state of people who succeed: the glory lies in the getting back up, not in a clean record. The sage's name makes it sound ancient, which is why it is printed on posters, gym walls and graduation cards, but the Irish essayist wrote it in a fictional Chinese voice. Nelson Mandela and Vince Lombardi are later users, not originators.
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In context
May contain spoilersShow the scene
Confucius never said this. It comes from Oliver Goldsmith's "Chinese Letters", a run of satirical essays published in London's Public Ledger in 1760 and 1761 and collected as The Citizen of the World (1762). The letters are written by an invented Chinese visitor, Lien Chi Altangi, and the line appears in one of the early ones (the seventh in Quote Investigator's count; Wikiquote files it as Letter VI), with a looser version, about true magnanimity, in a later letter. Because the editor's note said the letter borrowed from Confucius, readers took the sayings for his. By 1831 a magazine printed the line under his name, and it has stuck ever since.
Sources (2)
- Quote Investigator: Our Greatest Glory Is Not in Never FallingReply section, 1760-1831 citationsReference checked
- Wikiquote: Oliver GoldsmithQuotes, The Citizen of the World (1760-1761)Reference checked
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