Success Quote by Joseph Barber Lightfoot

Steel-manning the self is a very Victorian kind of spirituality, and Lightfoot’s line reads like a private rule of life polished into public counsel. The point isn’t motivational pep; it’s moral calibration. Failure and success are treated as equal-and-opposite temptations, both capable of knocking a person off their true work. In that symmetry you can hear the theologian’s suspicion of mood as a compass: despair is not humility, and exhilaration is not virtue.

The sentence is built on parallelism - “not be discouraged… not be elated” - which does more than sound tidy. It frames emotional reactions as choices, not weather. Lightfoot doesn’t promise you won’t feel the sting or the rush; he insists you won’t let either become your identity. The subtext is a warning about the ego’s two favorite costumes. Failure can be worn as an alibi (“I tried, therefore I’m absolved”), success as a coronation (“I won, therefore I’m right”). Both narratives blur the line between outcomes and character.

Context matters: Lightfoot was a major Anglican scholar and bishop in an era when faith, scholarship, and institutional authority were under pressure from modern criticism and scientific change. For someone tasked with defending texts, training clergy, and managing a church’s public credibility, steadiness wasn’t just personal hygiene; it was a professional necessity. The quote quietly argues for a kind of sanctified long game: keep doing the work, keep telling the truth, refuse the melodrama. Emotional moderation becomes ethical clarity.