A miss is as good as a mile

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A failure remains a failure, regardless of how close to success one has actually come.

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This proverbial saying dates from the 18th century. The first example of it that I can find in print is from the USA, in the journal The American Museum, Volume 3, 1788: A smart repartee… will carry you through with eclat such as, ‘a miss is as good as a mile’.