Quotes about fault
page 3

“My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.”

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

“Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

People

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199.
Misattributed

Failure, Passion

“Ah, why should all mankind
For one man's fault, be condemned,
If guiltless?”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

“To love with understanding and without understanding. To love blindly, and to folly. To see only what is loveable. To think only of these things. To see the best in everyone around, their virtues rather than their faults. To see Christ in them!”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, Understanding, Thinking, Christ

“The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

People, Thinking

“I am so sorry. I wish you knew even one tenth of one percent of how sorry I am…. It was my fault. Can I kill myself here, or should I do it outside, so the mess on your carpet doesn't upset your mother?”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

“A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Money

“I couldn't fault her for believing, because I had to imagine i was nice to have that illusion still intact.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Imagination

“In this pause, I suddenly saw something very clearly.

Whatever it was I wanted from my mother was simply not there to be had. It was not her fault.

And it was therefore not my fault that I was unable to elicit it.”

Alison Bechdel book Are You My Mother?

Source: Are You My Mother?

“Its like he knows he's better than you, but doesn't look down on you for it because he knows it's not your fault.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Source: Mansfield Park

“And before you ask, no, you're not driving, Myrnin. I remember the last time.'
'That accident was not my fault.'
'You were the only one on the road, and the mailbox actually didn't leap out in front of you. No arguments. You sit in the back, too.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Time

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Life, Wisdom, Happiness, Soul

“Love -- not dim and blind but so far-seeing that it can glimpse around corners, around bends and twists and illusion; instead of overlooking faults love seesthem to the secret inside.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: Salt of the Air

Love, Secret

“Vin: I don't know -- and it's all your fault, you know. I used to understand everything. Now it's all confused.

Kelsier: Yes, we've messed you up right properly.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Understanding

“We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Source: Six Thinking Hats Revised Edition

Way, Problem

“Good women always think it is their fault when someone else is being offensive. Bad women never take the blame for anything.”

Anita Brookner book Hotel du Lac

Source: Hotel du Lac

Women, Thinking

“I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Feeling, Courage, Parent, Hurt

“Either I'm funny or the world's funny. I don't know which. The bottle and lid don't fit. It could be the bottle's fault or the lid's fault. In either case, there's no denying that the fit is bad.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World

“Torture?” she asked with a laugh. “My first piece of information I’ll divulge to you? I wouldn’t recommend trying to torture me. I dislike it and grow sulky under pincers.
It’s a fault.”

Kresley Cole book The Warlord Wants Forever

Source: The Warlord Wants Forever

“Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

Source: A Shropshire Lad

Star, Help, Sea

“It's your fault, Eeyore. You've never been to see any of us. You just stay here in this one corner of the Forest waiting for the others to come to you. Why don't you go to THEM sometimes?”

A.A. Milne book The House at Pooh Corner

Source: The House at Pooh Corner

Waiting

“Nothing can work damage to me except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me and never am a real sufferer except by my own fault.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Suffering

“I'm not unfaithful, darling. I've plenty of faults but I'm very faithful. You'll be sick of me I'll be so faithful.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Unfaithfulness, Faith

“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

Exercises, Freedom, Country

“Meg, I give you your faults."

"My faults!" Meg cried.

"Your faults."

"But I'm always trying to get rid of my faults!"

"Yes," Mrs. Whatsit said. "However, I think you'll find they'll come in very handy on Camazotz.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Thinking

“But alas, if I have not maintained my victory, it is God's fault for not making man and the devil of equal strength.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

God, Victory

“They tied me back together, but they didn't use double knots. My insides are draining out of the fault lines in my skin, I can feel it, but every time I check the bandages, they're dry.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Feeling, Time

“By now the idea is spreading that revolutions so far are not enough and we must develop a revolution which will remedy their faults and go a step forward. This new revolution is the open revolution.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Idea

“Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps, si le tort n'était que d'un côté.
Maxim 496.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“You didn't lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence. That isn't the fault of the autistic child who does exist, and it shouldn't be our burden. We need and deserve families who can see us and value us for ourselves, not families whose vision of us is obscured by the ghosts of children who never lived. Grieve if you must, for your own lost dreams. But don't mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we're here waiting for you.”

Jim Sinclair (activist) (1940) Autism rights activist

"Don't Mourn for Us" (1993)

Children, Family, Dreams, Waiting

“The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. … I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel. First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz, second because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense. … This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam’s territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan, Lebanon, and Aceh in Indonesia. Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

War, Way, Democracy, Support

““So, his Slavonic Majesty hires thieves to spy for him. Spying is such a foul business that I am surprised that even a good Angevin thief would stoop to it.” He turned to Lord Peter with a sudden realization. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
”That’s all right, Your Highness,” Lord Peter said. “It’s a common reaction. Their spies are dirty, filthy scum, not fit to wipe your boots on, while our spies are noble gentlemen doing dangerous work for the love of King and Country. Would that it were so, Your Highness, but I’m afraid that sometimes the desired image is at fault—in both directions.””

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

Love, Business, Country

“By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Helen Burns to Jane (Ch. 9)
Jane Eyre (1847)

World, Way, Suffering

“Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Home

“To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do: whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness. I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind?”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Women, People, World, Behavior

“How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

"A Short View of Russia" (1925); Originally three essays for the Nation and Athenaeum, later published separately as A Short View of Russia (1925), then edited down for publication in Essays in Persuasion (1931)
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - John Maynard Keynes / Quotes / Essays in Persuasion (1931)
Essays in Persuasion (1931), A Short View of Russia (1925)

Life, World, Fish

“Don’t lose your temper,” said Ruell evenly. “It’s your worst fault, except for ignorance.”

Damon Knight book A for Anything

Source: A for Anything (1959), Chapter 7 (p. 88)

“It is not always our faults that ruin us, but the manner of our conduct after we have committed them.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Daughter, 1728, p. 200

“Any thought which is printed, either here or in the paper, without subsequent attack is generally believed to be true. This is not so much a logical condition as it is a fault of human nature. A longstanding or constant idea is often equated with a true one.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 9 “A Moral Dilemma” (p. 140).

Idea, Nature

“If there had been no Judas, Peter would be the great betrayer. It is only because he stands in the framework of a still greater betrayal that we find a thousand excuses for him and for the faults of the Church continuing and occurring over and over again.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Source: The Passion from Within (1981), p. 79

Betrayal

“He said the Brothers owed the Herondales because of old ties. If he dies, it will be--"
"--No one's fault. I remember when he put the protection spell on you. I told him I never wanted you to have anything to do with the Shadowhunters. He said it might not be my choice. He said that the pull of the Shadowhunters is like a riptide-- and he was right. I thought we had fought free, but here we are, back in Alicante, back in a war, and there sits my daughter with blood on her face and a Morgenstern blade in her hands.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Clary Fray and Jocelyn Fray, about Brother Zachariah, pg. 220
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

War, Daughters

“To tell the absolute truth, I’ve always been slightly embarrassed by Walter’s company. Whenever I’m with him, I feel the stretch of the old tightrope, the necessity of living up to the friendship of friendships, of cultivating an intimacy beyond words. The fact is that we have little to say to each other. There is only this thick sympathetic silence between us. We are comrades, true, but somewhat embarrassed comrades. It is probably my fault. For years now I have had no friends. I spend my entire time working, making money, going to movies and seeking the company of women.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Women, Money, Friendship, Truth

“It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History

“I marvelled how this Servant might meekly suffer there all this woe, and I beheld with carefulness to learn if I could perceive in him any fault, or if the Lord should assign to him any blame. And in sooth there was none seen: for only his goodwill and his great desire was cause of his falling; and he was unlothful, and as good inwardly as when he stood afore his Lord, ready to do his will. And right thus continually his loving Lord full tenderly beholdeth him.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love, Suffering, Learning

“I lead a simple life now, I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Duke, Winter for Two, p. 212
1990s, The Notebook (1996)

Love, Life, Dreams, Change

“The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

Lady Slings the Booze (1992)

Way, Reality

“Jaurès had over the last 8 days expiated many faults. He had helped the government in its diplomacy and, if war breaks out, he would have been amongst those who would have known how to do their duty…Quel crime abominable et sot!”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Diary entry (31 July 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 130.

War, Help

“Hayek says that the problem with classical liberalism was that it was not pure enough. The government needed to restrict itself to establishing the rule of law and to using antitrust to break up monopolies. It was the overreach of the government beyond those limits, via central banking and social democracy, that caused all the trouble. A democratic government needs to limit itself to rule of law and antitrust–and perhaps soup kitchens and shelters. And what if democracy turns out not to produce a government that limits itself to those activities? Then, Hayek says, so much the worse for democracy. A Pinochet is then called for to, in a Lykourgan moment, minimalize the state. After social democracy has been leveled and the rubble cleared away, then–perhaps–a limited range of issues can be discussed and debated by a–limited–restored democracy, with some kind of group of right-wing army officers descended from latifundistas Council of Guardians in the background to ensure that property remains sacred and protected, and the government small enough to fit in a bathtub. […] Hayek was formed in Austria. From his perspective the property and enterprise respecting Imperial Habsburg government of Franz Josef eager to make no waves, to hold what it has, and to keep the lid off the pressure cooker appears not unattractive. This is especially so when you contrasted would be really existing authoritarian alternatives: anti-Semitic populist demagogue mayors of Vienna; nationalist Serbian or Croatian politicians interested in maintaining popular legitimacy by waging class war or ethnic war; separatists who seek independence and then one man, one vote, one time. An “authoritarian” after the manner of Franz Josef looks quite attractive in this context–and if you convince yourself but they are as dedicated to small government neoliberalism as you are, and that the Lykourgan moment of the form will be followed by soft rule and popular assent, so much the better. And if the popular assent is not forthcoming? Then Hayek can blame the socialists, and say it is their fault for not understanding how good a deal they are offered.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

War, Law, Democracy, Understanding

“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

Country

“Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/975693.Helen_Rowland
Other

Art, Boy, Lovers, Nature

“I am watching the Democrat Party led (because they want Open Borders and existing weak laws) assault on our country by Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, whose leaders are doing little to stop this large flow of people, INCLUDING MANY CRIMINALS, from entering Mexico to U. S…..
…. In addition to stopping all payments to these countries, which seem to have almost no control over their population, I must, in the strongest of terms, ask Mexico to stop this onslaught - and if unable to do so I will call up the U. S. Military and CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!..
…. The assault on our country at our Southern Border, including the Criminal elements and DRUGS pouring in, is far more important to me, as President, than Trade or the USMCA. Hopefully Mexico will stop this onslaught at their Northern Border. All Democrats fault for weak laws!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

18 October 2018 at 4:25am https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1052883467430694912 then 4:35am https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1052885781675687936 then 4:45am https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1052888451199262725 <br class="br">2010s, 2018, October

People, Law, Country

“Let's face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear over our feelings with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting.... I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that, if we ignore something long enough, it’ll just vanish––
‘Where was I? Oh yes... Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted – never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons – there always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But, the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority — not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities – because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed?”

Christopher Isherwood book A Single Man

pps. 53-54
A Single Man (1964)

Love, Hate, People, Way

“Deception is always an evil, but in youth — youth, whose very faults should be open-hearted and impetuous, it lays the foundation of the worst possible faults of character.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No. 3. Guy Mannering — JULIA MANNERING.
Literary Remains

Youth, Evil, Heart

“General Wei Qing's victory was only a thing of chance.
And General Li Guang's thwarted effort was his fate, not his fault.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Song of an Old General" (老将行)

Fate, Effort, Chance, Victory

“[after drunkenly getting his ear pierced]
I said, "It wasn't my fault, it was Captain Morgan!" And [my wife] goes, "Oh, kinda like Jose Cuervo made you ride the floor buffer?"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

and I said, "Exactly!"
Here's Your Sign Reloaded (2003)

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
Legal

Life, Law, Dreams, Idea

“But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

“The two men would have disliked each other by instinct had they lived in different planets. Each was created only for exasperating the other; the virtues of one were the faults of his rival, until no good quality seemed to remain of either.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men

“I repeat, let us paint as much as we can and be productive, and be ourselves with all our faults and qualities; I say us, because the money from you [Theo], which I know costs you trouble enough to procure me, gives you the right, when there is some good in my work, to consider half of it your creation.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, Spring 1885; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 7 (letter 399) <br class="br">1880s, 1885

Money, Painting

“His only fault is that he has no fault.”
Nihil peccat, nisi quod nihil peccat.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 26, 1.
Letters, Book IX

“He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia. — Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418), book II, ch. VI, paragraph 2.
Misattributed

Men, Heart

“View all conflicts as your own fault first.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume III: Solace for the Heart in Difficult Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2000)

“In the movement of the proteron te phusei may be found the heart of thought, that which remains veiled in what thought says and which speaking obeys as some secret command. But already, when it speaks, thought no longer speaks what moves it. It no longer retains that emotion even as a fault of speech, as a dark night out of which it would expect to burst forth. Thought excludes the heart that moves it. That which makes thought live is spoiled, set outside of it. But it does not know this.”

Luce Irigaray (1930) feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist

Sexes et Parentés (1987), as translated by G. Gill, Sexes and Genealogies (1993), p. 49

Secret, Heart, Night

“I see Legros less often sometimes at Andler's as little as possible it means I get to bed late and I am short of funds, it is very pleasant nonetheless Courbet is so charming, Legros often goes there they get on very well he has some superb articles in the figaro. in the gazette des Beaux Arts.... then he will have one in the courrier du Commerce those are the ones I know about. success, women, good food, wine, beer, new acquaintances as a result of these articles, in short an accolade!!!!!!!!.... success can be harmful, it makes you relax, you sit on it and are distracted.... you alone should correct the faults, you know what I think of advice, correction. the gifted man should walk alone, straight to his goal, what happens is nothing, rejection, success, selling pleasing, all that is nonsense.”

Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904) painter from France

quote from a letter of Fantin-Latour, Paris, 26 June 1859, to James Whistler in London; from The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler - Repository: Glasgow University Library http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence/people/display/?cid=1073&nameid=Fantin_Latour_IH&sr=0&rs=1&surname=Fantin-latour&firstname= - System Number: 01073; Call Number: MS Whistler F 4.

Women, Food, Art, Beer

“I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having "too much" sex. At what point does a "healthy" amount become "too much"? There are, of course, those who suffer because their desire for sex has become compulsive; in their cases the drive (loneliness, guilt) is at fault, not the activity as such.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

San Francisco (p. 37).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Sex, Suffering, Loneliness

“One of the advantages of being in the futurism business is that by the time your readers are able to find fault with your forecasts, it is too late for them to ask for their money back.”

Ray Kurzweil (1948) Author, scientist, inventor, and futurist

Ray Kurzweil: The Library Journal, The virtual book revisited http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-virtual-book-revisited

Money, Business, Time, Future

“To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

Revenge

“"What," say you, "are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?" No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.”
Tu me' inquis 'mones? iam enim te ipse monuisti, iam correxisti? ideo aliorum emendationi vacas?' Non sum tam improbus ut curationes aeger obeam, sed, tamquam in eodem valetudinario iaceam, de communi tecum malo colloquor et remedia communico.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Tu me' inquis 'mones? iam enim te ipse monuisti, iam correxisti? ideo aliorum emendationi vacas?'
Non sum tam improbus ut curationes aeger obeam, sed, tamquam in eodem valetudinario iaceam, de communi tecum malo colloquor et remedia communico.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXVII

Men, Lying

“Setbacks in trying to realize the ideal do not prove that the ideal is at fault.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

As quoted by Rolf Edberg, Swedish Ambassador to Norway, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Hammarskjöld in Oslo, Norway (10 December 1961) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1961/hammarskjold-acceptance.html

“[On his Live Aid appearance with members of Led Zeppelin] They wanted me there early to rehearse the old Zeppelin songs, but I couldn't make it and I told them, "Listen, I know the songs. I know them backward and forward." Well, that day the tempos were all over the place, and it may have seemed like it was my fault, because I was the one who hadn't rehearsed, but I would pledge to my dying day that it wasn't me. In fact, it was Tony Thompson who was racing a bit; he was a bit nervous, I guess. It came off because of the magic of being Zeppelin; but I remember in the middle of the thing, I actually thought, How do I get out of here?”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

Playboy interview (October 1986)

Appearance

“An artist, if good for anything, foresees what his public will see; and what his public will see is what he ought to have intended — the measure of his genius. If the public sees more than he himself did, this is his credit; if less, this is his fault. No matter how simple or ignorant we are, we ought to feel a discord or a harmony where the artist meant us to feel it, and when we see a motive, we conclude that other people have seen it before us, and that it must therefore have been intended.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

People, Feeling, Motivation

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Aurobindo, from a letter of Sri Aurobindo that C.R. Das was reading out while defending him in the Alipore Bomb Trial. C.R. Das Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.

Life, Law, Dreams, Idea

“Confirm [the age of Apple is over]. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It's not the fault of Tim Cook, but it's not an area where there will be any more innovation.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

Confirm or Deny: Peter Thiel http://nytimes.com/2017/01/11/fashion/peter-thiel-confirm-or-deny.html in The New York Times (January 11, 2017)

Age, Cooking

“For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

The Art of Literature
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

Intelligence, Time

“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it…. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier.”

Neal Stephenson book The Big U

Sarah
The Big U (1984)

People, Fear, School, Way

“The defects and faults in the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Les défauts de l'âme sont comme les blessures du corps: quelque soin qu'on prenne de les guérir, la cicatrice paraît toujours, et elles sont à tout moment en danger de se rouvrir.
Variant translation: The defects of the mind are like the wounds of the body. Whatever care we take to heal them the scars ever remain, and there is always danger of their reopening.
Maxim 194.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Imagination

“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, — if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Speech to the Constitutional Convention (September 17, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 742.
Constitutional Convention of 1787

People, Thinking

“If you're allowed to make your mistakes, I think you should. But people don't really like hearing you admit them. Although I'd never wanted to dump on the musicians that were involved in that…. Because it was not their fault.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Strummer on Man, God, Law and the Clash (31 January 1988)

People, Thinking

“When a spirit has reached the end of the term assigned by Providence to his errant life, he chooses for himself the trials which he determines to undergo in order to hasten his progress - that is to say, the kind of existence which he believes will be most likely to furnish him with the means of advancing and the trials of this new existence always correspond to the faults which he has to expiate. If he triumphs in this new struggle, he rises in grade; if he succumbs, he has to try again.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 202.

Life

“If I loved you, well that's my fault”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lenders In The Temple
Conor Oberst (2008)

Love

“Listen to satsang. It is a very good thing. God created day and night. After that He created excellent things to eat, and then he landed us in this world. Isn't this human body beautiful? There is a nose to breathe with. Tell me, could we have survived without it? See what a good job of seeing these eyes do. Look how beautiful are the hands and the feet. If no seva is done, then these hands are of no use. These two ears have been given, if we don’t listen to satsang with them, aren’t they useless? If you do not go to satsang walking with these feet, they are also worthless. God has created all the parts of this body quite well, but if we don't use them properly, it is our fault, not the Creator's. The river flowing over there is the Ganga, but it is not flowing for its own use. It is we who drink its water, wash our clothes in it, and irrigate our fields with it. By bathing in it only the dirt of this body is washed, but by bathing in the Ganga of satsang, all the evils are removed. What I am telling you is also written in the Gita. But Gita cannot make you understand. Only the satguru can make you understand the satnam (true name), so do practice Knowledge. Look at Lord Shiva sitting with eyes closed [pointing towards a fountain with a statue of Shiva]. He always stays in the contemplation of Guru Maharaj. Whenever I see him he doesn’t do any other work. I don’t know whether he doesn’t like doing any other work or what. Therefore, you too should also practice Knowledge like this.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Prem Nagar, Hardwar August 21,1962 (translated from Hindi). Birthday Celebrations, as published in "Hansadesh" magazine, Issue 1, Mahesh Kare, January 1963. (First published address.)
1960s

God, World, Beauty, Drink

“[Theophile] Gautier's article is very good. I begin to feel a little more contented. His remarks about my thick colours are also very just. The critics who see and judge my pictures are not forced to know that in painting them I am not guided by a definite intention, although I do my utmost to try and attain the aim which I have in sight, independently of methods. People are not even obliged to know why it is that I work in this way, with all its faults.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet in his letter of 23 March 1851; as quoted by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 112
the most famous painting of Millet 'The Sower', reviewed in an article then by Gautier, was exhibited for the first time in 'The Salon' of Paris, at the End of 1850
1851 - 1870

People, Way, Feeling, Painting

“"We are not in the business of finding faults. But when we detect some loopholes during the process of audit, we advise the executive to plug those loopholes." - Vinod Rai at a seminar on 'Public Accountability and the Role of CAG' organized by the Institute of Public Auditors of India at New Delhi on 28/03/2012.”

Vinod Rai (1948) Comptroller and Auditor General of India

Business

“People with wisdom know that it is important to correct their own mistakes, while people without wisdom find it necessary to point out the mistakes of others. People with strong faith know that it is important to clear their own hearts, while those with unsteady faith seek to find fault in the hearts and prayers of others. This becomes a habit in their lives. But those who pray to Allah with faith, determination, and certitude know that the most important thing in life is to surrender their hearts to Allah.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Islam and World Peace: Explanations of a Sufi (2004)

Life, Wisdom, People, Faith

“[quoting a verse from the Torah, including some faults]: Behold, I send an angel before you, to guard you on this road, and to bring you to the place which I have prepared; Exodus 23:20.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Israëls, in het Nederlands) [een vers citerend uit de nl:Thora, inclusief enkele foutjes]: Zie, ik zend eenen Engel voor uw aangezicht, om u te behoeden op dezen weg, en om u te brengen tot de plaats, die ik bereid heb; Exodus 23:20.
Quote in his letter from Scheveningen 2 Sept. 1908, to Madam Alexander Levy-van Son in Hamburg; ; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 62
the same text Israels was reading as a 13 years old boy, on his Bar Mitzvah; After his death the same text was engraved on his tombstone, according to his will
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Angels, Quotes

“I knew im, she knew im, e knew im, we all knew im.’ After this paradigm, which impressed his hearers, he paused. ‘E was a customer ere. Not perhaps one of the best customers. Not like Roger Alliwell ere oo drinks whisky to the tune of near one bottle a day, which is good for the ouse and, as far as we can see, does imself no arm. But e was a customer, loyal to the ouse, regular in attendance, and that’s all we ask of any man or woman for that matter. Well, now e’s gone. We’re sorry e’s gone. You’re sorry e’s gone. I’m sorry e’s gone. And we can’t say much more than that. Now the question is: is e gone to a better place? I don’t know the answer to that, nor do you, nor does she. Perhaps e knows,’ said Ted, shrugging towards the vicar, ‘because it’s is job to know. But the rest of us don’t know. Right. But I say this. E done is best for all. Never a ard word come out of that man’s art. Right. Well loved e was and for all is faults we would love im still, if e was still alive. But e’s dead now and we wish im all the best in is new destination. And I can’t say no fairer than that.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Love, Art, Drink, Question

“Some faults may claim forgiveness.”
Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus.

Horace Ars Poetica

Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 347 (tr. Conington)

Forgiveness

“God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

"Rebelliousness", Note-Books (1912)

God

“We have the tendency to judge others by their surface appearance, and to find only their negative qualities. But if we search beneath the surface we discover that a myriad of strains mix together to create a particular person’s nature. The faults we perceive are likely to be the effect of circumstances, the psychological response to trauma, abuse, rejection, heartbreak, insecurity, pain, confusion, or disease.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Pain, Disease, Search, Nature

“Faults become thick when love is thin.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Love

“If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the 'establishment'—political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to 'take back America' from them.”

Robert B. Reich (1946) American political economist

Aftershock https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0307594521: The Next Economy and America's Future, Reich, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (2010), p. 145

Hell, Business, Madness

“Exaggeration of confidence,” he said, “is a fault in people who don’t know their business.”

Gordon R. Dickson book Tactics of Mistake

This is an early statement of what would come to be known as the Dunning–Kruger effect.
Source: Tactics of Mistake (1971), Chapter 20 (p. 315).

People, Confidence, Business

“I do not know a greater fault in the nurture of children than the conniving at the wanton acts of barbarity which they practise at an early age upon innocent insects; the judgment of that parent must be exceedingly defective, or strangely perverted, who can proportion the degree of cruelty to the smallness of the creature that unfortunately becomes the sufferer. It is but a fly, perhaps he may say, when he sees his child pluck off its wings or its legs by way of amusement; it is but a fly, and cannot feel much pain; besides the infant would cry if I was to take it from him, and that might endanger his health, which surely is of more consequence than many flies: but I fear worse consequences are to be dreaded by permitting it to indulge so vicious an inclination, for as it grows up, the same cruelty will in all likelihood be extended to larger animals, and its heart by degrees made callous to every claim of tenderness and humanity.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 388
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Cruelty to insects

Pain, Children, Health, Age

“It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Age

“If we had no faults, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.”

François de La Rochefoucauld book Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims

Si nous n'avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres.
Maxim 31.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Pleasure

“The great evil, and it was a hard thing to say, was that English officials in India, with many very honourable exceptions, did not regard the lives of the coloured inhabitants with the same feeling of intense sympathy which they would show to those of their own race, colour, and tongue. If that was the case it was not their fault alone. Some blame must be laid upon the society in which they had been brought up, and upon the public opinion in which they had been trained. It became them to remember that from that place, more than from any other in the kingdom, proceeded that influence which formed the public opinion of the age, and more especially that kind of public opinion which governed the action of officials in every part of the Empire. If they would have our officials in distant parts of the Empire, and especially in India, regard the lives of their coloured fellow-subjects with the same sympathy and with the same zealous and quick affection with which they would regard the lives of their fellow-subjects at home, it was the Members of that House who must give the tone and set the example. That sympathy and regard must arise from the zeal and jealousy with which the House watched their conduct and the fate of our Indian fellow-subjects. Until we showed them our thorough earnestness in this matter—until we were careful to correct all abuses and display our own sense that they are as thoroughly our fellow-subjects as those in any other part of the Empire, we could not divest ourselves of all blame if we should find that officials in India did treat with something of coldness and indifference such frightful calamities as that which had so recently happened in that country.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1867/aug/02/motion-for-an-address in the House of Commons (2 August 1867) on the Orissa famine of 1866 <br class="br">1860s

Fate, Age, Jealousy, Feeling

“I included songs which were aimed at making listeners think a little more deeply about faith in general. People of The Boxes for example, is not just a fable with implied reference to Jews and Christians, but it also points out that we who call ourselves "Muslims" are also living in a box sometimes. I wanted to help myself and the listeners realise our own faults too — to stop being so judgmental of others and to get ourselves out of the dogmatic boxes we have trapped ourselves in.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

On his album The Prophet’s Hands
Beating the drums of hope and faith (2004)

People, Faith, Thinking, Help

“Like all truly pure souls she [Chantal] quickly resigned herself to past faults, thought only of how to repair whatever harm they had done. "Of all my daughters, you are certainly the least bothered by scruples of conscience," Abbé Chevance used to say…. Even sin, once the will is detached and no longer nourishes it, withers and dies sterile. It is in the secret of intentions, like in a decomposing humus, in the dark forest of future sins, unpardoned sins, half dead, half living, that new poisons are distilled.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, p.88

Secret, Soul, Past, Future

Quotes about fault page 3

Quotes about fault
page 3