“Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.”

Source: The Claw of the Conciliator

in The Note Book, Kessinger Publishing (reprint 1998) ISBN 0766104168, 9780766104167
Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 12

#155
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 73
Context: When we begin to hate sin, and amend us by the ordinance of Holy Church, yet there dwelleth a dread that letteth us, because of the beholding of our self and of our sins afore done. And some of us because of our every-daily sins: for we hold not our Covenants, nor keep we our cleanness that our Lord setteth us in, but fall oftentimes into so much wretchedness that shame it is to see it. And the beholding of this maketh us so sorry and so heavy, that scarsely we can find any comfort.
And this dread we take sometime for a meekness, but it is a foul blindness and a weakness. And we cannot despise it as we do another sin, that we know: for it cometh of Enmity, and it is against truth. For it is God’s will that of all the properties of the blissful Trinity, we should have most sureness and comfort in Love: for Love maketh Might and Wisdom full meek to us. For right as by the courtesy of God He forgiveth our sin after the time that we repent us, right so willeth He that we forgive our sin, as anent our unskilful heaviness and our doubtful dreads.

Variant: We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Pour grands que soient les rois, ils sont ce que nous sommes:
Ils peuvent se tromper comme les autres hommes.
Don Gomès, act I, scene iii.
Le Cid (1636)

Source: The Subtle Knife