Shortcoming Quotes & Sayings

There is no effort without error or shortcoming. — Theodore Roosevelt

Herein lies the beauty of the flaw: that a shortcoming is a spiritual sign that says "Look! There is a perfect opportunity right here to grow and become better!" But instead of seeing those signs, people instead look and see something that is no longer worthy. Whether it be about themselves or about others. And so we have it that there are a great number of individuals who are missing out on great chances to improve themselves and to also believe in others. — C. JoyBell C.

I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. — Steven Pinker

Shortcoming shouldn't be in Longman's vocabulary. — Natalya Vorobyova

By three things the wise person may be known. What three? He sees a shortcoming as it is. When he sees it, he tries to correct it. And when another acknowledges a shortcoming, the wise one forgives it as he should. — Gautama Buddha

When the heavens are obscured to us, and nothing noble or heroic appears, but we are oppressed by imperfection and shortcoming on all hands, we are apt to suck our thumbs and decry our fates. As if nothing were to be done in cloudy weather, or, if heaven were not accessible by the upper road, men would not find out a lower ... There are two ways to victory, - to strive bravely, or to yield. How much pain the last will save we have not yet learned. — Henry David Thoreau

He spent the next two days in careful, decisive preparation efficiently conducted around his day job. The three imperatives of his mission were embedded in every action he performed: (1) keep it simple; (2) provide for every contingency; and (3) never panic no matter how much your plan goes awry, which it occasionally did. However, if there were a fourth rule, it would have to be: exploit the fact that most people are fools when it comes to things that actually matter, like their own survival. He had never suffered from that shortcoming. — David Baldacci

I think it's a huge shortcoming of mine - this disconnect between the world of human and animals. We are animals. — Rachel Zucker

A man's shortcoming lies in the belief that he must always assert his manliness. A woman's shortcoming lies in the belief that she must always repress it. — Kamand Kojouri

I do believe I can forgive almost any shortcoming a person may have except lack of enthusiasm ... — Venita VanCaspel

But Unix had a serious shortcoming: No common version existed. Over the years different versions of Unix had proliferated like weeds, so that an application written for one would not run unmodified on another. While DOS presented a single target to consumers, applications writers and computer makers, Unix did not. — G. Pascal Zachary

The shortcoming of purely political discourse between Christians and Jews arises from the fact that it is largely built upon the perception of a common enemy. — David Novak

It's so much easier to tell other people how to do their job than fix one's own shortcoming, isn't it? — Helen Simonson

Even though I want to expand the number of ways in which skilful ironic play happens, I suspect I'm probably guilty of the same shortcoming - and I hope that, one of these days, someone will claim that my book, while it goes in a salutary expansive direction, doesn't go far enough, that there are assumptions I make that show I've missed aspects of Mann's irony and ambiguity. — Philip Kitcher

I'm tempted to point out that our dealings, however unusual and close, were the dealings of businessmen. My ease with this state of affairs no doubt reveals a shortcoming on my part, but it's the same quality that enables me to thrive at work, where so many of the brisk, tough, successful men I meet are secretly sick to their stomachs and their quarterlies, are being eaten alive by bosses and clients and all-seeing wives and judgmental offspring, and are, in sum, desperate to be taken at face value and very happy to reciprocate the courtesy. This chronic and, I think, peculiarly male strain of humiliation explains the slight affection that bonds so many of us, but such affection depends on a certain reserve. Chuck observed the code, and so did I; neither pressed the other on delicate subjects. — Joseph O'Neill

Some people are born flight risks. It is no shortcoming of yours that they cannot keep their feet on the ground. It is not your fault that they cannot seem to stand in place. They are not leaving you; they are just leaving. — Trista Mateer

It wasn't northern agitators who pushed Negroes to question their country, as so many southern whites wanted to believe. It was their own pride, their patriotism, their deep and abiding belief in the possibility of democracy that inspired the Negro people. And why not? Who knew American democracy more intimately than the Negro people? They knew democracy's every virtue, vice, and shortcoming, its voice and contour, by its profound and persistent absence in their lives. The failure to secure the blessings of democracy was the feature that most defined their existence in America. Every Sunday they made their way to their sanctuaries and fervently prayed to the Lord to send them a sign that democracy would come to them. — Margot Lee Shetterly

(he pulled her hand back up and set it over his heart) This tightening in my chest that you can't see? That's something I've never felt before. You've got something no one else has. You don't have a shortcoming, sweetheart. You have an advantage. — Sylvia Day

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

With automobile accidents, mechanical failure is seldom the cause; and most often, operator error. I find the same to be true with corporate failings ... . the people are rarely the issue ... the shortcoming is most often found in the leadership. — Steve Maraboli

This is my main shortcoming: I was so determined not to lose time that I often did the wrong thing. Not losing time has been my permanent concern since I was three years old, when it dawned on me that time is the warp of life, its very fabric, something that you cannot buy, trade, steal, falsify, or obtain by begging. — Nina Berberova

You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed.
I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when
you are in the depths of despair?"
I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla.
Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in
the depths of despair?"
No, I didn't."
Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed. — L.M. Montgomery

As long as there is an AI shortcoming in any such area of endeavor, skeptics will point to that area as an inherent bastion of permanent human superiority over the capabilities of our own creations. This book will argue, however, that within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself. — Ray Kurzweil

To be aware of a single shortcoming in oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in someone else. — Dalai Lama

At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months later, those painful pages were dirt that nourished my yard, which I could walk with bare feet. It was a real and tangible connection to that larger immensity. I liked to remind myself that the same process is going to happen to me when I'm done, when I die and nature tears me up... — Ryan Holiday

Although he liked nearly everything else about himself, Keith hated his redeeming features. In his view they constituted his only major shortcoming -his one tragic flaw. — Martin Amis

Undergraduates today can select from a swathe of identity studies ... The shortcoming of all these para-academic programs is not that they concentrate on a given ethnic or geographical minority; it is that they encourage members of that minority to study themselves - thereby simultaneously negating the goals of a liberal education and reinforcing the sectarian and ghetto mentalities they purport to undermine. — Tony Judt

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

Do not be discouraged by the ways in which you fall short. Every shortcoming is to me an opportunity for your growth. — Julia Cameron

To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities. — Dalai Lama

Of all the emotional relationships in life, is there any more delicate, more noble, and more intense than a boy's deep and yet so totally bashful love for another boy? The kind of love that never speaks, never dares give way to a caress, a glance, or a word, the kind of vigilant love that bitterly grieves over every shortcoming or imperfection in the one who is loved, a love which is longing and admiration and negation of self, and which is pride and humility and calmly breathing happiness. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

I sometimes see a shortcoming in myself, how little patience or understanding I have for many people in the way they act. I am able to see the fragility in some, but I only have so much time to wade through their manipulations and traps and draining behaviour. Some people think I'm heartless in leaving others to suffer their own selves. — Bill Callahan

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. — Albert A. Bartlett

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. — Aldous Huxley

Women are still not reaching the most senior levels of corporations. This is not the shortcoming of women. We're talented and smart. — Ruth Porat

Shortcoming - another one of my shortcomings. I rubbed my brows with my thumb and forefinger. I'd been equally foolish for feeling a shred of pity for him - for the lone, brooding faerie, for someone I had so stupidly thought would really care if he met someone who perhaps felt the same, perhaps understood - in my ignorant, insignificant human way - what it was like to bear the weight of caring for others. I should have let his hand bleed that night, should have known better than to think that maybe - maybe there would be someone, human or faerie or whatever, who could understand what my life - what I - had become these past few years. — Sarah J. Maas

Nowhere is moral shortcoming more prevalent than in the intersection between our espoused morality and the way we engage romantic and sexual partners. In truth, how we function sexually is a microcosm of the way that we are in the world. We might ask ourselves, "Are we being selfish, considerate, or dismissive? Are we minimizing, compliant or controlling?" Sex is the ultimate laboratory where we can actually try out new ways of relating to ourselves and our lover, being conscious and mindful of how we impact another person. It takes great humility to open a genuine exploration of our lived
not just stated
morality. But to live by the dictates of our own internal compass brings equally great joy, serenity, and self-respect. — Alexandra Katehakis

The vision of Van Helsing as a vampire is one before which my imagination balks; this is doubtless only a shortcoming on my part; he may have been well fitted for the role, since as we have seen he had already the power, by means of speech, to cast his victims into a stupor. — Fred Saberhagen

Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical — Hermann Broch

The lack of historical memory is a serious shortcoming in our society. A mentality that can only say, "Then was then, now is now", is ultimately immature. Knowing and judging past events is the only way to build a meaningful future. Memory is necessary for growth. — Pope Francis

The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

But even we, with our supposed mastery of the English language, were not immune to the shortcoming of our vocabularies.
Words can only help you if you speak them. — Bianca Phipps

If tournament popularity was the most important consideration, then I think we would create a Smash Bros game that included a multitude of fast moves with complicated controls. However, I believe this is actually the greatest shortcoming of fighting games at present, and that is the reason why I don't do it. — Masahiro Sakurai

I have learned, that the person I have to ask for forgiveness from the most is: myself. You must love yourself. You have to forgive yourself, everyday, whenever you remember a shortcoming, a flaw, you have to tell yourself "That's just fine". You have to forgive yourself so much, until you don't even see those things anymore. Because that's what love is like. — C. JoyBell C.

I hadn't hold out much hope for myself; if my counterpart existed, he'd be amazingly talented to make up for my shortcoming, and that would condemn me to a life of living in his shadows; or he'd match my feeble powers and be so weak that we'd barely sense each other. — Joss Stirling

If someone finds a flaw [shortcoming] in us, know that there is imperfection [defect] in us. However, it is a different matter if that person has a habit of talking negatively, but generally that is not the case. — Dada Bhagwan

A major shortcoming of the Resistance is the outnumbering, before long, of the genuine warriors by camera-carrying midgets intent on leaving a record of their purported heroism. — Coco Chanel

The shortcoming of hanging pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak. — Boris Spassky

Everyone had something - some fear, some shortcoming, some problem. And some people had multiples in each area. The problems were what made people human beings - they fostered compassion and encouraged growth. What would be the point if everyone was perfect? — Karen McQuestion

Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else. — Dalai Lama

There really is "no effort without error and shortcoming" and there really is no triumph without vulnerability. — Brene Brown

The impact of human intention on physical systems within as well as outside the body has been scientifically demonstrated and reveals a shortcoming of the conventional medical paradigm and highlights a strength of the energy medicine paradigm. — Jed Diamond

I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered
that is for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me. — Robert Browning

But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as thespecial responsibility of mothersany shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood. — Sylvia Ann Hewlett