There’s a play waiting to be written in which the Devil appears and offers a writer or an artist huge and permanent fame. The only drawback, says the devil, is that “it won’t happen in your lifetime!”

We’re so accustomed to hearing about successful people that we’re sometimes blind to what it takes to succeed. We celebrate success, but often forget how much failure came first. Some of history’s greatest minds stumbled, were ignored, or ridiculed—yet their legacies endure.