Human Frailties Quotes - Page 2

• We are not masters of our own affections; our inclinations dailyalter: now we love pleasure, and anon we shall dote on business. Human frailty will have it so, and who can help it?

  George Etherege

  Helping, Affection, Pleasure

  1676 The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter, act 2, sc.2.

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• [On dishonest business methods:] ... frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other's weaknesses! - an excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another's shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another's pockets.

  Ida Tarbell

  Christian, Business, Fall

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• We’d hoped for love of a different kind, love that knew and forgave our human frailty but did not miniaturize our grander ideas of ourselves.

  Michael Cunningham

  Ideas, Different, Kind

  Michael Cunningham (2010). “A Home at the End of the World: A Novel”, p.172, Macmillan

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• And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage.

  John Locke

  Hands, Law, Temptation

  John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.313

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• By experience; by a sense of human frailty; by a perception of "the soul of goodness in things evil;" by a cheerful trust in human nature; by a strong sense of God's love; by long and disciplined realization of the atoning love of Christ; only thus can we get a free, manly, large, princely spirit of forgiveness.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Forgiveness, Strong, Long

  Frederick William Robertson (1871). “Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton”

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• There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not at the level of the human frailties of particular monarchs or presidents. No one seriously contends that the American presidency should be abolished because Bill Clinton is a self-confessed adulterer. So why should the abolition of the British monarchy be contemplated because the same is true of Prince Charles?

  David Cannadine

  Self, Important, President

  David Cannadine (1998). “History in Our Time”, Penguin Group USA

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• Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man.

  Herbert Hoover

  Humility, Men, Fishing

  Herbert Hoover, Ruth Dennis (1995). “The Wit and Wisdom of Herbert Hoover: A Compilation of Many of His Quotations”, Vantage Pr

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• When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off, like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us. But we listen in patience, as friends must, and as Isabel now did, refraining from comment, other than to encourage the release of the story and the attendant confession of human frailty and hope.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Emotional, Stories, Want

  "Friends, Lovers, Chocolate". Book by Alexander McCall Smith, 2005.

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• For me, the value of a climb is the sum of three inseparable elements, all equally important: aesthetics, history, and ethics. Together they form the whole basis of my concept of alpinism. Some people see no more in climbing mountains than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.

  Walter Bonatti

  Real, Climbing, Essence

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• Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith....Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith.

  Saul Alinsky

  Fear, Mean, Love Is

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• Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.

  John Steinbeck

  Benefits, Speech, Bread

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.63, Penguin

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• It is your organized religions that have made it clear through their most sacred scriptures that cruelty and killing is an acceptable response to human frailty and human differences. This goes against every human instinct, but organized religion has reorganized human thoughts. Some humans have even been turned against their own instinct for survival. And so people go around maiming and killing each other, because they've been told quite directly that this is what God does to them--and what God wants them to do to each other.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Differences, People, Survival

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• I don't think I've ever been face to face with pure evil, so I don't think I've ever seen it with my own eyes. But I do understand human frailty and I do understand the capacity of people to be intermittently noble and virtuous and fallible.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Eye, Thinking, People

  "Marvel Avengers Assemble - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is.

  Thomas Noon Talfourd

  Inspirational, Men, Justice

  Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1836). “Ion: A Tragedy in 5 Acts”, p.113

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• I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering, but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.

  Walter Bonatti

  Real, Essence, Over You

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• Those who hope, by retiring from the world, to earn a holiday from human frailty, in themselves and others, are usually disappointed.

  Iris Murdoch

  Holiday, World, Frailty

  Iris Murdoch (2001). “The Bell”, p.77, Penguin

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• But how can you know anything of the impression made on others? Who can assure you that others do not draw therefrom incentives to evil? You do not know the depths of human frailty. . . Oh, how truly was it said that if some Christian women could only suspect the temptations and falls they cause in others with modes of dress and familiarity in behavior, which they unthinkingly consider as of no importance, they would be shocked by the responsibility which is theirs.

  Pope Pius XII

  Christian, Fall, Responsibility

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