“Mistakes are the inevitable lot of mankind.”

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Ernest, Chapter One
The Iron Heel (1907)

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Letter to H. L. Bulwer (1 Sept. 1839), quoted in Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer's Life of Palmerston (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipppincott, 1871), vol. 2, pp. 261-62. (Palmerston was criticizing descriptions of the Ottoman Empire as "decaying," etc.)
1830s
Context: Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, or by mistaking general resemblance or imaginary similarity for real identity. Thus, people compare an ancient monarchy with an old building, an old tree, or an old man, and because the building, tree, or man must, from the nature of things, crumble, or decay, or die, they imagine that the same thing holds good with a community, and that the same laws which govern inanimate matter, or vegetable or animal life, govern also nations and states.

L'existence du Soldat est (après la peine de mort) la trace la plus douloureuse de barbarie qui subsiste parmi les hommes.
Servitude et grandeur militaires; (ed.) Paul Viallaneix Oeuvres complètes, (1965) p. 358; translation from Humphrey Hare (trans.) The Military Necessity (1953) p. 17. (1835).