unsuccessfulness

Some 350 years ago, the chemist Robert Boyle penned essays on “the unsuccessfulness of experiments”.

The author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People has made a career out of unsuccessfulness, and by the look of things he's done all right out of it – he's got a nice wife who finds him amusing and a big house in west London with an enviable shed-office at the bottom of the garden.

Probably the unsuccessfulness of her efforts provoked her, and incited her to conquer at any price my real or feigned coldness.

Probably the unsuccessfulness of her efforts provoked her, and incited her to conquer at any price my real or feigned coldness.

Whoever considers the revolutions of learning, and the various questions of greater or less importance, upon which wit and reason have exercised their powers, must lament the unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the slow advances of truth, when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the destruction of those that went before him.