Faults Quotes - Page 22

• Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm, healthfulness being their chief object.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Dark, Army, Water

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter IV, Section 9,

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can never make someone punctual who is not, or quick who is slow, or lively who wants to plod on carefully. I have learnt that every fault is an exaggerated quality, nothing else.

  Elisabeth of Wied

  Quality, Want, Lively

  6 Copy quote

• We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Punishment, Lament

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.34

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A woman with a hazel eye never elopes from her husband, never chats scandal, never finds fault, never talks too much nor too little--always is an entertaining, intellectual, agreeable and lovely creature.

  Arthur Frederick Saunders

  Husband, Eye, Lovely

  4 Copy quote

• We are as answerable for what we give as for what we receive; nay, the misplacing of a benefit is worse than the not receiving of it; for the one is another person's fault, but the other is mine.

  Seneca the Younger

  Giving, Receiving, Benefits

  4 Copy quote

• We are too prone to find fault; let us look for some of the perfections.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Perfection, Complaining, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• One of the greatest faults of the women of the present time is a silly fear of things, and one object of the education of girls should be to give them knowledge of what things are really dangerous.

  Ellen Swallow Richards

  Girl, Fear, Silly

  22 Copy quote

• Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Spring, Expression, Ideas

  John Morley, Thomas B. Macaulay (2016). “Machiavelli : the Founder of the Political”, p.89, Editions Le Mono

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Pride, Men, Misery

  6 Copy quote

• There are some faults which, when well managed, make a greater figure than virtue itself.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Virtue, Figures, Wells

  5 Copy quote

• Great men should not have great faults.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Greatness, Men, Should

  4 Copy quote

• The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Friendship, Opposites, Grace

  4 Copy quote

• The faults of a brilliant writer are never dangerous on the long run; a thousand people read his work who would read no other; inquiry is directed to each of his doctrines; it is soon discovered what is sound and what is false; the sound become maxims, and the false beacons.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Running, Long, People

  4 Copy quote

• We may observe in humorous authors that the faults they chiefly ridicule have often a likeness in themselves. Cervantes had much of the knight-errant in him; Sir George Etherege was unconsciously the Fopling Flutter of his own satire; Goldsmith was the same hero to chambermaids, and coward to ladies that he has immortalized in his charming comedy; and the antiquarian frivolities of Jonathan Oldbuck had their resemblance in Jonathan Oldbuck's creator.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Hero, Humorous, Knights

  4 Copy quote

• Women see faults much more readily in each other than they can discover perfections.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Perfection, Rivalry

  5 Copy quote

• Want of perseverance is the great fault of women in everything--morals, attention to health, friendship, and so on. It cannot be too often repeated that women never reach the end of anything through want of perseverance.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Perseverance, Attention, Want

  4 Copy quote

• Our faults afflict us more than our good deeds console. Pain is ever uppermost in the conscience as in the heart.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Pain, Heart, Deeds

  5 Copy quote

• God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Ignorant, Certain

  5 Copy quote

• Only those faults which we encounter in ourselves are insufferable to us in others.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Encounters, Insufferable, Shortcomings

  8 Copy quote

• If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am:
  I'm a genuine philanthropist--all other kinds are sham.
  Each little fault of temper and each social defect
  In my erring fellow creatures, I endeavor to correct.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Giving, Attention, Erring

  W. S. Gilbert, Ian C. Bradley (2016). “The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan”, p.537, Oxford University Press

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• We can love with all our hearts those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be impertinent to believe that perfection alone has the right to please us; sometimes our weaknesses attach us to each other as much as our virtues.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Believe, Heart, Perfection

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are very wrong to think that some fault or other can exclude virtue, or to consider the alliance of good and evil as a monstrosity or an enigma.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Thinking, Evil, Alliances

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed from her and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she meant to answer with. . . .

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Book, Loss, Journey

  Katherine Anne Porter (2014). “Flowering Judas and Other Stories: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.80, Library of America

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• He who leaves a fault unpunished invites crime.

  Publilius Syrus

  Crime, Invites

  4 Copy quote

• Perfect servants would be the worst of all for certain masters, whose happiness consists in finding fault with them.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Perfect, Would Be, Certain

  5 Copy quote