— Dracula (1897), Chapter 10
About this quote
हिन्दी में
हम सीखते असफलता से हैं, सफलता से नहीं!
What it means
As a law it is false, and the exclamation mark is doing most of the arguing. Success teaches a great deal. What it cannot tell you is which of the things you did was the thing that worked, because everything you did is still standing.
Failure is narrower and therefore more informative: it isolates at least one element that is definitely wrong. That is the defensible version of the line — not that success is worthless, but that it confirms where failure discriminates. It is also, said aloud, the kind of thing people say immediately after something has gone badly.
What it teaches you
When something works, resist writing down the lesson — you do not yet know which part caused it. When something fails, record the specifics: what you tried, in what order, what you expected. The tidy moral is the part you can reconstruct later; the details are the part you cannot.
अर्थ और सीख
वाक्य कहता है कि सीख असफलता से मिलती है, सफलता से नहीं। पूरी तरह सच नहीं — पर इतना सच है कि सफलता यह नहीं बताती कि उसमें से कौन-सा फ़ैसला काम आया, जबकि असफलता कम से कम एक चीज़ पक्की बता देती है जो गलत थी। इसलिए असफल कोशिश का पूरा ब्योरा लिख रखिए, सिर्फ़ उसका सुंदर-सा ‘सबक़’ नहीं।
Where it comes from
Van Helsing, after a plan fails. It is the closest the novel comes to a statement of method — the vampire hunters proceed by trial, error and shared notes.
Dracula is built from journals, letters, telegrams and phonograph cylinders, and the line fits that structure: knowledge in this book is assembled slowly by people comparing their mistakes.
