The author of the Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, recently gave a commencement speech at Harvard.
An excerpt …
Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the same scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case, you failed by default.
A pretty good speech on the whole.