Not to Have Tried — Woodberry Journal

A literary hardcover journal featuring George Edward Woodberry’s “Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.” — verified from the primary source. Literary objects by Quoteiac.

Some lines stay private. They live in the part of you that tallies what you've done and what you kept deciding to do later. George Woodberry wrote one of those lines — and a journal is where it belongs.

George Edward Woodberry

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."

From Woodberry's Wendell Phillips: The Faith of an American (1912), pp. 44–45. Verified from the primary source.

Woodberry wrote those words at the close of his 1912 book on Wendell Phillips — abolitionist, orator, one of the most demanding public consciences of the nineteenth century. The line wasn't ornamental. It was a distinction: between what happens to you and what you chose. Defeat is an outcome. You can be defeated and still have been present, still have thrown something into the world. Not trying is different — a decision you made before anything could happen. And Woodberry said plainly that this, not defeat, is the failure that costs you something real.

A journal is the one place that distinction can't be negotiated. In conversation you can make not-trying sound like caution, like strategy, like waiting for the right moment. On a blank page there's no audience to convince. You either did or you didn't, and the white space knows which.

The Ensō

The cover carries a hand-brushed gold-and-copper ensō — the Zen circle painted in one motion and left open at the bottom. Both sentences of the quote sit inside it in italic serif, with Woodberry's name quiet beneath. The open gap is deliberate: in the ensō tradition the unfinished circle is the complete one, because the attempt — not the finished shape — is the form. A fitting mark for a book of blank pages. The circle is the trying; the pages are where you do it.

About This Journal

• Size — 5.5″ × 8.5″
• Pages — 80 lined, cream-colored pages
• Cover — hardcover, matte, with the ensō printed on the front
• Closure — elastic band and ribbon page marker
• Inner pocket — expandable back pocket for loose notes

Who It's For

The person sitting on a project, a decision, a conversation they keep meaning to start. Anyone who wants a journal that asks something of them instead of just holding their thoughts. And a real gift for the person who's ready but hasn't moved yet — the blank line is the invitation, and the accusation.

The attempt is the point. Begin.

The same line is on the tees — two angles, one verdict:

• Not to Have Tried Tee — for the person deciding whether to go again after a loss
• True Failure Tee — for the person who has already taken the loss and is working out what it meant
• Mankind.Artist. Tee — Woodberry on humanity as the ultimate artist

Browse the George Woodberry collection.

George Edward Woodberry, in Plain English

• American poet and literary critic (1855–1930)
• Professor of comparative literature at Columbia University (1891–1904); at Harvard he was mentored by Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell
• This line comes from his 1912 book on Wendell Phillips — verified from that primary source
• The quote is misattributed all over the internet — it's genuinely his
• Not a household name, which is part of what makes the line land differently once you know the source
• Believed in the examined life and the specific courage it takes to actually begin