“The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.”

—  William Hazlitt

No. 43
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It se…" by William Hazlitt?
William Hazlitt photo
William Hazlitt 186
English writer 1778–1830

Related quotes

William Hazlitt photo

“Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Knowledge of Character"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Vanity and Vanities".
Source: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Modesty is oftner mistaken than any other Virtue.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections

Joseph Joubert photo

“What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Elvis Costello photo

“Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

All This Useless Beauty
Song lyrics, All This Useless Beauty (1996)
Context: Nonsense prevails, modesty fails
Grace and virtue turn into stupidity
While the calendar fades almost all barricades to a pale compromise
And our leaders have feasts on the backsides of beasts
They still think they're the gods of antiquity
If something you missed didn't even exist
It was just an ideal — is it such a surprise?

“Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry

Ramsay MacDonald photo

“The only reason from beginning to end is that our foreign office is anti-German and that the Admiralty was anxious to seize any opportunity for using the Navy in battle practice. … Never did we arm our people and ask them to give us their lives for less good cause than this.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Leicester Pioneer (7 August 1914), quoted in The Times (9 April 1918), p. 8 and The Times (18 January 1924), p. 14
1910s

Bernard Mandeville photo

“Because Impudence is a Vice, it does not follow that Modesty is a Virtue; it is built upon Shame, a Passion in our Nature, and may be either Good or Bad according to the Actions perform'd from that Motive.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

Remark C, p. 65
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as our virtues.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 175.

Robert E. Howard photo

“Barbarism has its vices, its sophistries, no less than civilization. Your cynicisms and sophistications are weak and childish beside the elemental cynicism, the vital sophistication of what you call savagery. If our virtues were unspoiled as a new-born panther cub, our sins were older than Nineveh.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Thunder-Rider" (c. 1936)

Related topics