“This sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.”

— Jane Austen , book Emma

Source: Emma

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Jane Austen 477

English novelist 1775–1817

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“Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.”

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Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.
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“Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.”

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Part I, section ii
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
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Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

“On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,
Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
By fancying the flaw she cannot find.”

Robert Browning The Ring and the Book

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Context: Forgive me this digression — that I stand
Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak
O' the business, when the Count's good angel bade
"Put up thy sword, born enemy to the ear,
"And let Law listen to thy difference!"
And Law does listen and compose the strife,
Settle the suit, how wisely and how well!
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Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
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“Be England what she will,
With all her faults she is my country still.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

The Farewell (1764), line 27; comparable with: "England, with all thy faults I love thee still, My country!", William Cowper, The Task, book ii. The Timepiece, line 206