Success Quote by Beverly Sills

Sills’s line doesn’t romanticize risk; it threatens complacency. The first half grants the listener an out: failure hurts, yes, and disappointment is real. That concession matters coming from an opera star, a profession built on public judgment, vocal fragility, and the occasional spectacular crack. She’s not selling hustle-culture bravado. She’s acknowledging the emotional cost of ambition.

Then she sharpens the blade: “doomed” if you don’t try. It’s deliberately disproportionate, a little theatrical in the way opera itself is theatrical. The word swaps a temporary feeling (disappointed) for a permanent condition (doomed). Subtext: the real catastrophe isn’t bombing an audition or getting a bad review; it’s choosing a life small enough to avoid criticism. In that framing, “trying” isn’t merely a strategy for success but a moral stance - proof that you refused to self-censor.

The quote also carries the ethos of Sills’s era and career arc. She rose in a time when classical institutions were gatekept, and women were often expected to be decorative, agreeable, and grateful. “Don’t try” can look like prudence when the system is stacked; Sills calls it what it becomes over time: surrender disguised as realism.

It works because it reframes fear. Failure is survivable. Regret is the thing that metastasizes.