“Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?”

“To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

“We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

“There are no secrets to success: don’t waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

“I told them I was but a man, and they must not expect me to be perfect; if they expected perfection from me, I should expect it from them; but if they would bear with my infirmities and the infirmities of the brethren, I would likewise bear with their infirmities.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Search not to find how other men offend,
But by that glass thy own offences mend;
Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom,
(So it be learning) or from whence it come.
Of thy own actions, others' judgments learn;
Often by small, great matters we discern:
Youth what man's age is like to be doth show;
We may our ends by our beginnings know.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

“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

“If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“Seek Knowledge and adorn it with forbearance and dignity. Be humble to those whom you teach and to those from whom you learn. Don't be tyrannical in your teaching conduct, for you will forfeit that to which you are entitled to (the reward) on account of it.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person