Quotes about fault
page 7

Camille Pissarro photo
Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo

“If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed — if we are not willing — we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (17 July 1971)

William Hazlitt photo
Abraham Isaac Kook photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Well, it's sugar for sugar
And salt for salt
If you go down in the flood
It's gonna be your own fault”

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

Compare: "I give you sugar for sugar, but all you want is salt for salt/ Well if you can't get along with me, then it's your own fault." Richard Brown, James Alley Blues.
Song lyrics, The Basement Tapes (1975), Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood) (recorded 1967)

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska photo

“The great artist is conscious of the talent and power he possesses otherwise he would not see his faults and so would not be able to improve.”

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891–1915) French painter and sculptor

Letter to Sophie Brzeska-Savage Messiah By H S (Jim) Ede Heinimann (1931)

Molière photo

“If the purpose of comedy be to chastise human weaknesses I see no reason why any class of people should be exempt. This particular failing is one of the most damaging of all in its public consequences and we have seen that the theatre is a great medium of correction. The finest passages of a serious moral treatise are all too often less effective than those of a satire and for the majority of people there is no better form of reproof than depicting their faults to them: the most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.”

Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule.
Preface http://books.google.com/books?id=HH4fAAAAYAAJ&q=%22On+veut+bien+%C3%AAtre+m%C3%A9chant+mais+on+ne+veut+point+%C3%AAtre+ridicule%22&pg=PT87#v=onepage, as translated by John Wood in The Misanthrope and Other Plays (Penguin, 1959), p. 101
Variant translation http://books.google.com/books?id=vdFMAQAAIAAJ&q=%22People+do+not+mind+being+wicked+but+they+object+to+being+made+ridiculous%22&pg=PA127#v=onepage: People do not mind being wicked; but they object to being made ridiculous.
Tartuffe (1664)

Ishirō Honda photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Democritus photo

“It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

John Green photo

“Green, John. (2012). The Fault in Our Stars. New York, New York: Penguin Group, 313..”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

References

André Breton photo
Sharron Angle photo

“Jon Ralston: So you're saying if people lose their jobs through no fault of their own, as many have during this recession, Sharron Angle's solution is to cut their unemployment benefits so low so they're somehow gonna go out and find jobs that don't exist? How does that make any sense?
Sharron Angle: There are jobs that do exist. That's what we're saying, is that there are jobs. But those are entry-level jobs.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Face to Face
2010-06-29
Sharron Angle's Unemployment Solution: There Are Lots Of Jobs Available
2010-06-30
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/30/sharron-angles-unemployme_n_631350.html

Brook Taylor photo
George Herbert photo

“Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie:
A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

Francesco Berni photo

“For fault inveterate, new punishment.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

A colpa vecchia pena nuova.
LVI, 8
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.”
Proximum ab innocentia tenet locum verecunda peccati confessio.

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 1060
Sentences

Edward Elgar photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Margaret Hughes photo

“It is every man's own fault if he does not take such advice as will be sure to lead him right.”

William Henry Ashurst (judge) (1725–1807) English judge

Goodtitle v. Otway (1797), 7 T. R. 420.

“Where conscience finds moral fault in purportedly divine imperatives, the imperatives need to be reexamined.”

Harold M. Schulweis (1925–2014) American rabbi and theologian

Conscience: The Duty to Obey and the Duty to Disobey (2008)

Erik Naggum photo

“For some reason, the United States is the only country on Earth where accidents don't happen – it's always somebody's fault, and you can sue that somebody for neglect.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: About the usage of throw/catch http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4a8b7e8d414b6c46 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Gore Vidal photo
Rand Paul photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.”

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

This has been widely attributed to Franklin since the 1940s, but is not found in any of his works. The language is not Franklin's, nor that of his time. It does paraphrase a portion of something he wrote in 1732 under the name Alice Addertongue:
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard that one of the handsomest or best Men in Town has said something in Praise either of her Beauty, her Wit, her Virtue, or her good Management. If you know any thing of Humane Nature, you perceive that this naturally introduces a Conversation turning upon all her Failings, past, present, and to come.
Misattributed

Simone Weil photo

“To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 274

A. M. Homes photo
Oriana Fallaci photo

“There are moments in Life when keeping silent becomes a fault, and speaking an obligation. A civic duty, a moral challenge, a categorical imperative from which we cannot escape.”

The Rage and The Pride (2001). Editor Random House Incorporated, 2002 ISBN 0847825043, 9780847825042. p. 17.
The Rage and the Pride (2002)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“2982. It is my own Fault, if I am deceived by the same Man twice.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Daniel O'Connell photo

“My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.”

Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) Irish political leader

July 1812, aged 37, reflecting on the failure to secure equal rights or Catholic Emancipation for Catholics in Ireland. Quoted from Vol I, p. 185, of O'Connell, J. (ed.) The Life and Speeches of Daniel O'Connell, 2 Vols, Dublin, 1846)

William Blake photo

“Love to faults is always blind,
Always is to joys inclined,
Lawless, winged, and unconfined,
And breaks all chains from every mind.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Love to Faults
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Bruce Schneier photo
F. Anstey photo

““No doubt the fault was mine,” said the Professor, in a tone that implied the opposite.”

F. Anstey (1856–1934) English novelist and journalist

Source: The Brass Bottle (1900), Chapter 3, “An Unexpected Opening”

Chester W. Nimitz photo
Haruki Murakami photo
John D. Carmack photo

“Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my 'gold standard', and it has been quite a while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand new extensions work as documented the first time I try them. When I have a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault. With anyone else's drivers, I assume it is their fault.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Thomas McGuire, Creative 3D Blaster GeForce4 Ti4400 review http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/3dblaster_ti4400/ti4400-5.shtml TechSpot (2002-05-02)

Gautama Buddha photo
Charles Kingsley photo
Bill Bryson photo
Matthew Prior photo

“That if weak women went astray,
Their stars were more in fault than they.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

Hans Carvel (1700).

Francis Parkman photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Will Eisner photo
Je Tsongkhapa photo
Ned Kelly photo
Willie Nelson photo
James Branch Cabell photo
Cat Stevens photo
Mark Manson photo

“A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 5, “You Are Always Choosing” (p. 97)

“The fault we admit to is seldom the fault we have, but it has a certain relationship to it, a somewhat similar shape, like that of a sleeve to an arm.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Michael Moore photo

“No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

[Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush, MichaelMoore.com, 2 September 2005, http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/vacation-is-over-an-open-letter-from-michael-moore-to-george-w-bush]
2005

Ian Holloway photo

“Apparently it's my fault that the Titanic sank.”

Ian Holloway (1963) English association football player and manager

On criticism from Plymouth Argyle fans during Leicester City's match against Plymouth Argyle. Holloway Column, BBC Sport: Football (website), retrieved 15 February 2008, page now lapsed.
Gordon Strachan v Ian Holloway: Sportsmail picks their top 10 funny quotes ahead of Middlesbrough's showdown with Blackpool, 2009-12-08, Mail Online, 2011-04-29 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1234084/Gordon-Strachan-v-Ian-Holloway-Sportsmail-picks-10-funny-quotes-ahead-Middlesbroughs-showdown-Blackpool.html,
Sourced quotes

“Let me remind you that science is not necessarily wisdom. To know, is not the sole nor even the highest office of the intellect; and it loses all its glory unless it act in furtherance of the great end of man's life. That end is, as both reason and revelation unite in telling us, to acquire the feelings and habits that will lead us to love and seek what is good in all its forms, and guide us by following its traces to the first Great Cause of all, where only we find it pure and unclouded.
If science be cultivated in congruity with this, it is the most precious possession we can have— the most divine endowment. But if it be perverted to minister to any wicked or ignoble purpose — if it even be permitted to take too absolute a hold of the mind, or overshadow that which should be paramount over all, the perception of right, the sense of Duty — if it does not increase in us the consciousness of an Almighty and All-beneficent presence, — it lowers instead of raising us in the great scale of existence.
This, however, it can never do but by our fault. All its tendencies are heavenward; every new fact which it reveals is a ray from the origin of light, which leads us to its source. If any think otherwise, their knowledge is imperfect, or their understanding warped, or darkened by their passions. The book of nature is, like that of revelation, written by God, and therefore cannot contradict it; both we are unable to read through all their extent, and therefore should neither wonder nor be alarmed if at times we miss the pages which reconcile any seeming inconsistence. In both, too, we may fail to interpret rightly that which is recorded; but be assured, if we search them in quest of truth alone, each will bear witness to the other, — and physical knowledge, instead of being hostile to religion, will be found its most powerful ally, its most useful servant. Many, I know, think otherwise; and because attempts have occasionally been made to draw from astronomy, from geology, from the modes of the growth and formation of animals and plants, arguments against the divine origin of the sacred Scripture, or even to substitute for the creative will of an intelligent first cause the blind and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, they would reject their study as fraught with danger. In this I must express my deep conviction that they do injury to that very cause which they think they are serving.
Time will not let me touch further on the cavils and errors in question; and besides they have been often fully answered. I will only say, that I am here surrounded by many, matchless in the sciences which are supposed so dangerous, and not less conspicuous for truth and piety. If they find no discord between faith and knowledge, why should you or any suppose it to exist? On the contrary, they cannot be well separated. We must know that God is, before we can confess Him; we must know that He is wise and powerful before we can trust in Him, — that He is good before we can love Him. All these attributes, the study of His works had made known before He gave that more perfect knowledge of himself with which we are blessed. Among the Semitic tribes his names betoken exalted nature and resistless power; among the Hellenic races they denote his wisdom; but that which we inherit from our northern ancestors denotes his goodness. All these the more perfect researches of modern science bring out in ever-increasing splendour, and I cannot conceive anything that more effectually brings home to the mind the absolute omnipresence of the Deity than high physical knowledge. I fear I have too long trespassed on your patience, yet let me point out to you a few examples.
What can fill us with an overwhelming sense of His infinite wisdom like the telescope? As you sound with it the fathomless abyss of stars, till all measure of distances seems to fail and imagination alone gauges the distance; yet even there as here is the same divine harmony of forces, the same perfect conservation of systems, which the being able to trace in the pages of Newton or Laplace makes us feel as if we were more than men. If it is such a triumph of intellect to trace this law of the universe, how transcendent must that Greatest over all be, in which it and many like it, have their existence! That instrument tells us that the globe which we inhabit is but a speck, the existence of which cannot be perceived beyond our system. Can we then hope that in this immensity of worlds we shall not be overlooked? The microscope will answer. If the telescope lead to one verge of infinity, it brings us to the other; and shows us that down in the very twilight of visibility the living points which it discloses are fashioned with the most finished perfection, — that the most marvellous contrivances minister to their preservation and their enjoyment, — that as nothing is too vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute or trifling for His care. At every turn the philosopher meets facts which show that man's Creator is also his Father, — things which seem to contain a special provision for his use and his happiness : but I will take only two, from their special relation to this very district. Is it possible to consider the properties which distinguish iron from other metals without a conviction that those qualities were given to it that it might be useful to man, whatever other purposes might be answered by them. That it should. be ductile and plastic while influenced by heat, capable of being welded, and yet by a slight chemical change capable of adamantine hardness, — and that the metal which alone possesses properties so precious should be the most abundant of all, — must seem, as it is, a miracle of bounty. And not less marvellous is the prescient kindness which stored up in your coalfields the exuberant vegetation of the ancient world, under circumstances which preserved this precious magazine of wealth and power, not merely till He had placed on earth beings who would use it, but even to a late period of their existence, lest the element that was to develope to the utmost their civilization and energy migbt be wasted or abused.
But I must conclude with this summary of all which I would wish to impress on your minds—* that the more we know His works the nearer we are to Him. Such knowledge pleases Him; it is bright and holy, it is our purest happiness here, and will assuredly follow us into another life if rightly sought in this. May He guide us in its pursuit; and in particular, may this meeting which I have attempted to open in His name, be successful and prosperous, so that in future years they who follow me in this high office may refer to it as one to be remembered with unmixed satisfaction.”

Robinson in his 1849 adress, as quoted in the Report of the Nineteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science https://archive.org/stream/report36sciegoog#page/n50/mode/2up, London, 1850.

Philip Sidney photo
Baltasar Gracián photo

“Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised.”

Fabricáronles a muchos su grandeza sus malévolos. Más fiera es la lisonja que el odio, pues remedia éste eficazmente las tachas que aquélla disimula.
Maxim 84 (p. 47)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Joni Madraiwiwi photo
Rob Ford photo

“What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you're going to get bitten… Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes. My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”

Rob Ford (1969–2016) Canadian politician, 64th Mayor of Toronto

Remarks on cyclist http://bicycling.com/blogs/thehub/2012/05/03/toronto-mayor-cyclists-are-a-pain-in-the-ass/?cm_mmc=Facebook-_-Bicycling-_-Content-Blog-_-toronto (3 May 2012)
2010s, 2012

Ramakrishna photo

“If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 299

Francesco Berni photo

“Each should be sure of an untarnished name,
Before he ventures others' faults to blame.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Che guardar dee ciascun d'esser ben netto,
Prima ch' altri riprenda di difetto.
XXVI, 34
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Khaled Hosseini photo
Cato the Elder photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“Some people's faults are becoming to them; others are disgraced by their own good traits.”

Il y a des personnes à qui les défauts siéent bien, et d'autres qui sont disgraciées avec leurs bonnes qualités.
Maxim 251.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Donald A. Norman photo
Klaus Kinski photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Will Cuppy photo

“[Footnote] It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Frederick the Great

Walter Savage Landor photo

“Wearers of rings and chains!
Pray do not take the pains
To set me right.
In vain my faults ye quote;
I write as others wrote
On Sunium’s hight.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

The last Fruit of an old Tree, Epigram cvi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Jack Kerouac photo

“It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

The New York Journal-American (8 Dec 1960)

Taj El-Din Hilaly photo
Stendhal photo
Paul Gabriël photo

“.. that one [a tree study in Gabriël's studio] is from my early times; I don't make them that way anymore; look how the thing is painted..; and those days my teachers told me that nothing would come of me in this way. What kind of folks were they? [o. a. his early and short teacher Koekoek, c. 1844-45] And which guys belonged to them? Well, let's keep mum about that; all those guys are dead already. But those days [c. 1840's] it was the ruling idea to use nature only as a tool; she had to be embellished later with imagination and so on …. imagination …. the stupidest thing in the world. (L. de Haes asked him: Do you think imagination is so improper?) Improper, I think it is simply an unhealthy trait. You see; imagination is the proper way to insanity. Imagine that you start painting from your imagination without knowing nature; after all, there will be no result whatsoever. All those people of imagination imagine so much, and it is the greatest misfortune you can have in life, you know what it is good for: to idealize your faults.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: ..da's er een [ een boom-studie] uit m'n eersten tijd; zoo doe 'k het niet meer; kijk dat ding eens geschilderd wezen; en in dien tijd zeiden mijn leermeesters dat er op die manier niets van mij terecht zou komen. Wat een lui waren dat hè [o.a. zijn tijdelijke vroege leermeester Koekoek, c. 1844-45]? En wie waren dat zoo al? Ja daar zullen we maar over zwijgen; die menschen zijn nu al dood; maar 't was toen de opvatting, de natuur alleen als hulpmiddel te gebruiken; zij moest nog verfraaid worden met verbeelding en zoo al meer .... imaginatie.... 't stomste wat er op de wereld is. (L. de Haes: Vindt u verbeelding dan zoo verwerpelijk?) Verwerpelijk, och ik vind het eenvoudig een ziekelijke eigenschap, zie je wel; verbeelding, dat is de weg naar de krankzinnigheid. Verbeeld je dat je uit je verbeelding gaat schilderen zonder de natuur te kennen; daar komt immers niets van terecht. Al die menschen van verbeelding verbeelden zich zoo veel, en 't is 't grootste ongeluk wat je op de wereld kan hebben, weet je waar 't alleen goed voor is: om je gebreken te idealiseeren.
Quote of Gabriël, 1893; as cited by L. de Haes, in 'P.J.C. Gabriël'; published in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift 3., April/May 1893, pp. 453-473
1880's + 1890's

Pete Yorn photo

“There was a time. She could never see him and her fault was to always need him.”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

So Much Work
Song lyrics

I. F. Stone photo
Ali Khamenei photo
Meša Selimović photo

“Translated: We are no one's, always at a boundary, always someone’s dowry. Is it a wonder then that we are poor? For centuries now we have been seeking our true selves, yet soon we will not know who we are, we will forget that we ever wanted anything; others do us the honour of calling us under their banner for we have none, they lure us when we are needed and discard us when we have outserved the purpose they gave us. We remain the saddest little district of the world, the most miserable people of the world, losing our own persona and nor being able to take on anyone else's, torn away and not accepted, alien to all and everyone, including those with whom we are most closely related, but who will not recognise us as their kin. We live on a divide between worlds, at the border between nations, always at a fault to someone and first to be struck. Waves of history strike us as a sea cliff. Crude force has worn us out and we made a virtue out of a necessity: we grew smart out of spite.”

So what are we? Fools? Miserable wretches? The most complex people in the world. No one is such a joke of history as we are. Only yesterday we were something that we now wish to forget, yet we have become nothing else. We stopped half way through, flabbergasted. There is no place we can go to any more. We are torn off, but not accepted. As a dead-end branch that streamed away from mother river has neither flow, nor confluence it can rejoin, we are too small to be a lake, too big to be sapped by the earth. With an unclear feeling of shame about our ancestry and guilt about our renegade status, we do not want to look into the past, but there is no future to look into; we therefore try to stop the time, terrified with the prospect of whatever solution might come about. Both our brethren and the newcomers despise us, and we defend ourselves with our pride and our hatred. We wanted to preserve ourselves, and that is exactly how we lost the knowledge of our identity. The greatest misery is that we grew fond of this dead end we are mired in and do not want to abandon it. But everything has a price and so does our love for what we are stuck with.
Death and the Dervish (1966)

Pete Yorn photo

“So many lies. Are taking hold. It’s not your fault. There’s many scars. ~ "On Your Side"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Edward Carpenter photo

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Harry Truman photo

“I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Letter to Walter F. George (October 1946); as quoted in Great Jewish Quotations (1996) by Alfred J. Kolatch, p. 463

Gerald of Wales photo

“Giraldus, garrulous, egotistic, spiteful, as he is, makes us half forget his faults in the endless instruction, the endless amusement, of his pages.”

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Edward A Freeman The History of the Norman Conquest of England Vol. 5 (1876) p. 579.
Criticism

Charlotte Brontë photo
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Friedrich Engels photo
André Maurois photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Robert Graves photo

“Faults in English prose derive not so much from lack of knowledge, intelligence or art as from lack of thought, patience or goodwill.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch. 3: "Where Is Good English to Be Found?"

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Khaled Hosseini photo

“It's not their fault if, in the heat
Of their transactions, I repeat
It's not their fault if vampires meet
And gurgle in their spats.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Poem The men in bowler hats are sweet

Bill O'Reilly photo

“Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don't make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to "provide," no matter what the circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2010-12-09
Keep Christ in Unemployment
BillOReilly.com
http://www.billoreilly.com/column;jsessionid=47EBD06AF914FD6B2945149104DA563F?pid=30748
2011-06-07
referring to Jim McDermott saying "This is Christmas time. We talk about good Samaritans, the poor, the little baby Jesus in the cradle and all this stuff. And then we say to the unemployed, we won't give you a check to feed your family. That's simply wrong."

William Trufant Foster photo
Sonny Bill Williams photo

“I feel like I am on the right path now. It has helped me with my confidence on the sporting field and with my self-belief, but outside of sport my life is a lot smoother too. Like everyone, I have my faults and I veer off the path sometimes, but my faith helps me get back on it and to stay being a good person. I am a lot happier now in my own skin.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Williams on his Muslim faith. Sonny Bill Williams, the contender http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/the-contender/story-e6frg8h6-1226586019500, by Greg Bearup, The Australian, dated 2 March 2013.

Davy Crockett photo

“Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.”

Davy Crockett (1786–1836) American politician

As quoted in David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (1994) by James Atkins Shackford, p. 106

George Bernard Shaw photo
Warren Farrell photo

“I could be a much better role model by sharing more openly with him my shadow side, my faults, my mistakes, asking him to be my teacher rather than being his.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 120.