Success Quote by John Burroughs

Burroughs draws a hard moral boundary line: discouragement is human; failure is chosen. The sentence is built like a trapdoor. It starts by granting the reader an alibi, even a dignity - you can fall into doubt repeatedly and still be intact. Then it snaps shut on the real target: the moment discouragement curdles into grievance, when effort is replaced by accusation. That pivot is the quote's engine. It doesn't romanticize grit; it indicts the psychology that converts setbacks into a permanent identity.

The phrasing is almost legalistic. "Until" works like a statute of limitations, defining when ordinary struggle becomes culpable surrender. "Begins to blame" matters, too: Burroughs isn't talking about one bitter outburst, but the start of a habit, a narrative you rehearse until it feels like truth. In that sense, "somebody else" isn't just an external scapegoat. It's a stand-in for any explanation that lets the self off the hook - the system, bad luck, the unfair boss, the jealous friend. Some of those may be real; Burroughs is less interested in their reality than in what happens when they become your final story.

Context helps. Burroughs, a nature essayist shaped by 19th-century American self-reliance, wrote in a culture intoxicated by character talk: discipline, industry, personal responsibility. His line echoes that era's moral coaching, but it also reveals an anxiety familiar now: the seductive power of victimhood as a resting place. The quote works because it flatters and challenges at once - it forgives the feeling, but refuses to sanctify the excuse.