To create a noble failure seemed almost the point.

"I don't have a huge amount of time for noble failure," Denton says.

Yet it is nobody's idea of a noble failure; words like fiasco are more often heard.

Love the idea above of every album being a 'Pyrrhic victory or noble failure'.

Perhaps, I said a bit facetiously, there was no such thing as a noble failure in America.

"It's hard to imagine how one can write about noble failures," he said.

All the same, Handler says he envisioned the books as "noble failures."

The July 20 plot was a noble failure, an honorable treason.

He concluded that the film "amounts to a noble failure."

We thought it was an impossible project that would be a brave and noble failure.