quotations about faults
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Two persons will not be friends long if they are not inclined to pardon each other's little failings.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Society and of Conversation"
When you begin to excuse your faults, you are then beginning to respect them.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
speech, Jun. 14, 1953
Men's graces must get the better of their faults as a farmer's crops do of the weeds--by growth. When the corn is low, the farmer uses the plough to root up the weeds; but when it is high, and shakes its palm-like leaves in the wind, he says, "Let the corn take care of them," for the dense shadow of growing corn is as fatal to weeds as the edge of the sickle.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
We confess small faults to insinuate that we have no great ones.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Some people have a way of making their faults pleasing, while others have a way of making their virtues repulsive.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
We often appear unconscious of our faults, merely from frequency of viewing them.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Men sometimes reproach themselves with fancied faults, that they may be thought less guilty of real ones.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
We confess our faults in the plural, and deny them in the singular.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Wink at small faults; remember thou hast great ones.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1738
Certain faults are necessary to the individual if he is to exist.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
A man does not mind being blamed for his faults, and being punished for them, and he patiently suffers much for the sake of them; but he becomes impatient if he is required to give them up.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The bad points of others show out so strongly against the good that they usually strike our eyes before they wound us.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours