“To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked.”

D'uomo è il fallir, ma dal malvagio il buono
Scerne il dolor del fallo.
Rosmunda, III, 1; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 665.

Original

D'uomo è il fallir, ma dal malvagio il buono Scerne il dolor del fallo.

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 "To err is human; but contrition felt for the crime distinguishes the virtuous from the wicked." by Vittorio Alfieri?
Vittorio Alfieri photo
Vittorio Alfieri 11
Italian dramatist and poet 1749–1803

Related quotes

William Makepeace Thackeray photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life.”

1910s
Source: Quoting Plato, as translated by Abraham Arden Brill, "The Interpretation of Dreams" https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu/511 (1913 edition), p.493

Denis Diderot photo

“The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

On Dramatic Poetry (1758)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“I am shocked by this wicked crime.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Reaction to the assassination of Gandhi. Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 27, 1948. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19480127&id=n_4uAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GNwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1578,6285092&hl=en
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Statius photo

“Blind counsels of the wicked! Crime cowardly ever!”
O caeca nocentum consilia! o semper timidum scelus!

Source: Thebaid, Book II, Line 489

Bertrand Russell photo

“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
1910s

Victor Hugo photo

“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”

Les feuilles d'automne (1831)
Variant: To divinise is human, to humanise is divine.
Source: Les Misérables

Robert Byrne photo

“To err is human, to purr is feline.”

Robert Byrne (1928–2013) American chess player and writer

Source: The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Alexander Pope photo

“To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Source: An Essay on Criticism (1711)

Related topics