Quotes & Sayings About Our Faults

The World's a Printing-House, our words, our thoughts,
Our deeds, are characters of several sizes.
Each soul is a Compos'tor, of whose faults
The Levites are Correctors; Heaven Revises.
Death is the common Press, from whence being driven,
We're gather'd, Sheet by Sheet, and bound for Heaven. — Francis Quarles

I wasn't always broken; we are all born pure. It is our journey that burdens us and leads us astray. Our mistakes that beat us down and cover us in guilt and shame, burying us a little more with each successive hardship. It is up to us to dig ourselves out, to come to terms with our faults, to embrace not only our imperfections but those of the ones we love, and to once again find the path we strayed from. — Madeline Sheehan

The desire of talking of ourselves, and showing those faults we do not mind having seen, makes up a good part of our sincerity. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

428. - We easily forgive in our friends those faults we do not perceive. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

We yield at once with humbled mien,
Because, with all our faults, we love our Queen. — W.S. Gilbert

We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own. — Pablo Picasso

What better can we do than prostrate fall before Him reverent, and there confess humbly our faults, and pardon beg with tears watering the ground? — John Milton

Just as love blinds us to imperfections in others, it magnifies those we see in ourselves. But if this is true, then the opposite must also be the case. We can take comfort in the fact that our faults will be invisible to those who love us. The success or failure of any relationship depends not just on how we feel about each other, but on how we make each other feel about ourselves. — Tonya Hurley

The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water. — Alexander Pope

We are great and our faults are great and therefore our problems great and great are our consolations. — Abraham Isaac Kook

Once you develop confidence in your own ability, you'll be able to make a real contribution to creating a better world. Self-confidence is very important. Not in the sense of blind pride, but as a realistic awareness of what you can do. As human beings we can transform ourselves by our good qualities and reducing our faults. Our intelligence enables us to judge what is good from what is harmful. — Dalai Lama

Love doesn't excuse our faults: it makes them insignificant. — Marty Rubin

Surely when a man is painting a picture he ought not refuse to hear any man's opinion ... Since men are able to form a true judgement as to the works of nature, how much more does it behoove us to admit that they are able to judge our faults. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults of our pity, but affectation appears to be the only true source of the ridiculous. — Henry Fielding

We can all control our own destiny. And I think sometimes it's a copout to say, "Well, it's this person's fault or another person's fault." — Joel Osteen

The numerous evils to which individual persons are exposed are due to the defects existing in the persons themselves. We complain and seek relief from our own faults; we suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far from being connected with them! — Maimonides

It may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision. There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us. — Hannah More

Is it that bad, Mrs. Bowen?" Clement asked.
Emily shook her head. "Gertrude's been hurt and so she's generalizing. It's a pretty good country on the whole, and the people in it, too. We have our faults and they may be glaring, and we have individuals we may not be proud of, but take us by and large we'll stick our necks our for something we believe in, and that in itself may be a fault, but it's one I like."
"Bravo," Abe said. — Madeleine L'Engle

Few behaviors of other people are more irritating than those that display our own faults in an unattractive way. — John Verdon

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will. — Simone Weil

Our pain and mistakes and faults are an integral part of us. They make our joy and successes and qualities all the more significant. — Jasinda Wilder

We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection. — Jean Paul

Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine. — Saint Augustine

Never let us be discouraged with ourselves. It is not when we are conscious of our faults that we are the most wicked; on the contrary, we are less so. We see by a brighter light; and let us remember for our consolation, that we never perceive our sins till we begin to cure them. — Francois Fenelon

Let us fall before the majesty of our great God, acknowledging our faults, and praying that he will make us ever more conscious of them. — John Calvin

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud,if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues. — William Shakespeare

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others. — Samuel Johnson

We are very much like birds that have lived too long in a cage to which we return even when we get the chance to fly away. We have grown so accustomed to our faults that we can barely imagine what life would be like without them. The prospect of change makes us dizzy. — Matthieu Ricard

Paco, we are all so much more than our faults, aren't we? — R. Elizabeth Carpenter

Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Everyone knows that weeds eat out the life of the garden and of the productive fields. It's like that in the building and developing of character. No one knows our own faults and tendencies better than we do ourselves, so that it is up to each one of us to keep the weeds out, and to keep all growth vigorous and fruitful. — George Matthew Adams

I suppose it goes without saying that negative speaking so often flows from negative thinking about ourselves. We see our own faults, we speak
or at least think
critically of ourselves, and before long that is how we see everyone and everything. No sunshine, no roses, no promise of hope or happiness. Before long we and everybody around us are miserable. — Jeffrey R. Holland

If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down to the world? ... how it might, because it could know its own creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death? — Wendell Berry

The Church and the world have a great need of eucharistic worship. Jesus waits for us in this sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease — Pope John Paul II

Blessed are those who imitate us for they shall inherit our faults. — Jacinto Benavente

The places in our personality where we tend to deviate from love are not out faults, but our wounds. God doesn't want to punish us, but to heal us. And that is how He wishes us to view the wounds in other people. — Marianne Williamson

We shall, as we ripen in grace, have greater sweetness towards our fellow Christians. Bitter-spirited Christians may know a great deal, but they are immature. Those who are quick to censure may be very acute in judgment, but they are as yet very immature in heart. He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more; he overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it ... I know we who are young beginners in grace think ourselves qualified to reform the whole Christian church. We drag her before us, and condemn her straightway; but when our virtues become more mature, I trust we shall not be more tolerant of evil, but we shall be more tolerant of infirmity, more hopeful for the people of God, and certainly less arrogant in our criticisms. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The impenitent sometimes excuse themselves by saying of professed Christians, "I am as good as they are. They are no more self-denying, sober, or circumspect in their conduct than I am. They love pleasure and self-indulgence as well as I do." Thus they make the faults of others an excuse for their own neglect of duty. But the sins and defects of others do not excuse anyone, for the Lord has not given us an erring human pattern. The spotless Son of God has been given as our example, and those who complain of the wrong course of professed Christians are the ones who should show better lives and nobler examples. If they have so high a conception of what a Christian should be, is not their own sin so much the greater? They know what is right, and yet refuse to do it. {SC 32.1} — Ellen G. White

What is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults, and feel our own. — Alexander Pope

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species. — Alain De Botton

On and off, all that hot French August, we made ourselves ill from eating the greengages. Joss and I felt guilty; we were still at the age when we thought being greedy was a childish fault and this gave our guilt a tinge of hopelessness because, up to then, we had believed that as we grew older our faults would disappear, and none of them did. — Rumer Godden

We put pride into everything like salt. We like to see that our good works are known. If our virtues are seen, we are pleased; if our faults are perceived, we are sad. I remark that in a great many people; if one says anything to them, it disturbs them, it annoys them. The saints were not like that - they were vexed if their virtues were known, and pleased that their imperfections should be seen. — John Vianney

We should always be grateful for the faults in our partner because if they didn't have those faults from the start, they would have been able to marry someone much better than us — Ajahn Brahm

I didn't marry you because you were perfect. I didn't even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise. That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage. And when our children were growing up, it wasn't a house that protected them; and it wasn't our love that protected them
it was that promise. — Thornton Wilder

It is a good proof and test of our love if we can bear with such faults and not be shocked by them. Others, in their turn, will bear with your faults, which, if you include those of which you are not aware, must be much more numerous. — Teresa Of Avila

If the people of Old Earth, our ancestors and their descendants today who remain, could keep building, could keep trying, how can we do less? We are their children, and while we bought to the stars with us all the faults and the problems and the flaws of the past, we also bought the good things, the determination, and the willingness to help others, and the imagination to build things greater then every shortcoming humanity has ever known. — Jack Campbell

We easily forget our faults when no one knows them but ourselves. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by telling against ourselves. — St. Jerome

We are not greatly pleased that our friends should respect our good qualities if they venture to perceive our faults. — Luc De Clapiers

The transition from lost to found is never an easy one. It is never easy to be a prodigal son
or daughter. It is never easy to say, 'I will arise and go to my father ... ' (Luke 15:18, 19). This is never easy, because it is not until our situation becomes completely hopeless that we can humble ourselves to the extent of admitting that such a gross mistake was our own. — Robert L. Short

To get a place saved in heaven we must grow from our mistakes and know what is right or wrong so we don't make the wrong decision again in our life. I feel that we live as more as a test, a test of our soul, and our willingness to accept our faults, and willingness to try to change the negative aspects of us. — Austin V. Songer

We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them. — Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

And for another person to come along side us on our journey - for two messy, broken people to come together and say "I know your faults, I know you're going to do some things I hate, I know the person you are now is not the person you want to be. However, I know the person you could become and I want to help you get there."
That's what it's all about. — Cole Ryan

[The South] is ****ed for its virtues and praised for its faults, and there are those who wish its annihilation. But most revealing of all is the fear that it gestates the revolutionary impulse of our future. — Richard M. Weaver

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
[Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech] — John Steinbeck

I don't tolerate whining, I look at people & say 'you're a victim, it's not your fault' figure our how to survive! — Allan Sloan

The faults and shortcomings we see in the members of our own ward or branch are of less consequence to us than one of the smallest in ourselves. — Jacob De Jager

Our faults are apt to assume giant and exaggerated forms to our eyes in youth. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I thank God that you know the art of tearing yourself apart - I mean the way to humble yourself truly by recognizing and realizing your faults. You are right in believing yourself to be as you describe and to be most unsuitable for any kind of duty; it is on this foundation that Our Lord will base the execution of His plans for you. — Vincent De Paul

Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth. — Louis L'Amour

Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don't you think? — Alice Walker

It's nobody's fault that our hearts work in their little strange ways. It's nobody's fault that we fall for one another. It's nobody's fault that we can't have the love we yearn. It's nobody's fault that we never learn. So, save your apology, my dear. Save it for later days. Save it for better days. — Noor Iskandar

Nothing is more apt to deceive us than our own judgment of our work. We derive more benefit from having our faults pointed out by our enemies than from hearing the opinions of friends. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are — Samuel Johnson

Every time I criticize what I consider to be excesses or faults in the news business, I am accused of repression, and the leaders of various media professional groups wave the First Amendment as they denounce me. That happens to be my amendment, too. It guarantees my free speech as it does their freedom of the press ... There is room for all of us - and for our divergent views - under the First Amendment. — Spiro T. Agnew

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses, - for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it - not in a set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. — Herman Melville

It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him. — William Barclay

I think we as believers can be secure in our relationship with Christ. I'm not saying that sin isn't sin. I'm not saying that people should live in unrepentant sin. I'm not saying that that's a mark of a mature believer at all. Certainly if someone looks at my life, they will see that I have surrendered my heart, my life to Jesus Christ. I'll be very glad to tell them what my faults and my weaknesses are and the areas that I pray about in my life every day. — Alan Chambers

I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues. — W. Somerset Maugham

When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds. — Bryant McGill

In other men we faults can spy,/ And blame the mote that dims their eye;/ Each little speck and blemish find;/ To our own stronger errors blind. — Benjamin Franklin

Without a doubt, one of the things which keeps us from attaining perfection is our tongue. When one has reached the point of no longer committing faults in speech, he has surely reached perfection, as was said by the Holy Spirit. The worst defect in talking is talking too much. Hence, in speech be brief and virtuous, brief and gentle, brief and simple, brief and charitable, brief and amiable. — Saint Francis De Sales

Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious than the petty actions of others that tend to irritate us! God calls us to graciously bear with the weaknesses of others, tolerating them and forgiving them even as He has forgiven us. — Jerry Bridges

Those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life, although I think many of us find the church a refuge for a lot of our personality faults. Those of us, for example, who never learned to dance feel that the church is an ideal place for us if we can find a church that doesn't believe in dancing. Then we can get away with never having learned how to dance. You can carry this in all sorts of directions and see that the church is a refuge for what is really a 'flaw' in your own makeup. — Charles M. Schulz

How we love to blame others for our misfortunes! Almost every individual who has lost money in stock speculation has on the tip of his tongue an explanation which he trots out to show that it wasn't his own fault at all ... Hardly one loser has the manliness to say frankly, I was wrong. — B.C. Forbes

Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them. — Joseph Addison

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

Those who have committed no faults want no pardon. We are only defending what we deem our indisputable rights. — George Washington

It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all. — Ayn Rand

Every time we hold our tongues instead of returning the sharp retort, show patience with another's faults, show a little more love and kindness, we are helping to stock-pile more of these peace-bringing qualities in the world instead of armaments for war. — Connie Foster

Because our hearts are frivolous and because we ignore our faults we never discover the sickness in our souls, but idly we laugh when we have full reason to weep. — Thomas A Kempis

Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew, - if that be its standard, here it is ... I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties ... shower down upon her a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" - "Yes, but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults. — Charles Dickens

It is so wonderful and comforting to know that when everyone else only sees our faults, God still sees our possibilities. — Joyce Meyer

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others. — Francois Fenelon

Our time on earth is not well spent by counting rewards before God has given them to us, but rather, by looking for our faults and repenting of them — Dan Schilling

A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble explanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners. — Mary Barnett Gilson

Writing a diary every evening before going to bed is a good habit. We can record in the diary how much time we have devoted to our spiritual practice. The diary should be written in a way that helps us see our mistakes and correct them. It should not be a mere document of other peoples' faults or our daily transactions. — Mata Amritanandamayi

We don't necessarily stand by our faults every time, but we will always stand by our methodologies and ethos. — Adam Savage

Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive — Ronald Reagan

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer 'Tomorrow,' his name is today. — Gabriela Mistral

Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can't pinpoint where you are in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you can learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiences are well nigh infinite, you'd best figure our your good points and learn to get by with what you have. — Haruki Murakami

There are only two things to understand in this world. First is, one's own True Self, and the other is, our faults from the past [life]. Won't these faults have to be broken? — Dada Bhagwan

Love transgresses the possibility of the rights of the individual becoming only selfish indulgence. For love, we will accept a person's faults and pain, and take them on as our own. — Rod Dubey

O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'tis the mode of the day: but the acknowledgment passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them. — Fanny Burney

we ought not to let either our joy at their faults or our grief at their success be idle, but in either case we ought to reflect, how we may become better than them by avoiding their errors, and by imitating their virtues not come short of them. — Plutarch

Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers
everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us;
it is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that
make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us.
It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to
think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and
ask not whither? — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs. — Catullus