Errors Quotes - Page 17

• We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Philosophy, Fall, Men

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• One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.

  Hermann Hesse

  Self, Siddhartha, Detours

  Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.9, Om Books International

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• The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have; Not universal love But to be loved alone.

  W. H. Auden

  Heart, Men, Mad

  "September 1, 1939" l. 59 (1939)

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• Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.

  Paul Valery

  Mistake, Believe, Fruit

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• The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination, which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action, she thought it would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling.

  Henry James

  Girl, Determination, Thinking

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• Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's creations, books are the nearest to us for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to the truth, and our persistent leanings to error. But most of all they resemble us in their precious hold on life.

  Joseph Conrad

  Book, Ambition, Men

  1905 'Books'.

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• I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Book, Reading, Heart

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1873). “Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.453

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• He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites...He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

  C. S. Lewis

  Religious, Couple, Eye

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• If a man has committed wrong in life, I don't know any moralist more anxious to point his errors out to the world than his own relations.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Men, World, Anxious

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2016). “Vanity Fair”, p.205, Tyché

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• The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

  Edward Gibbon

  Race, Long, History

  Edward Gibbon (2009). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition”, p.237, Modern Library

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• Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.

  Douglas Adams

  Past, Blame, Ability

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• Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.

  Thomas Hardy

  Crush, Wish, Doe

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Jude the Obscure: Works of Hardy”, p.23, 谷月社

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• Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

  George Eliot

  Beautiful, Struggle, Feelings

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.2784, Delphi Classics

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• A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Thinking, Ideas, Temptation

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.15

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• And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed; but when they cannot, and wish to do it anyway, here lies the error and the blame.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Lying, Men, Wish

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• Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.

  George MacDonald

  Sorry, Princess, Opportunity

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.4208, Delphi Classics

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• There is one other error in the Gondsman's line of resoning, I believe, on ap urely emotional level. If machines replace achievement, then to what will people aspire? And who are we, truly, without such goals? Beware the engineers of society, I say, who would make everyone in all the world equal. Opportunity should be equal, must be equal, but achievement must remain individual.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Believe, Opportunity, Emotional

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• Some mothers in today's world feel "cumbered" by home duties and are thus attracted by other more "romantic" challenges. Such women could make the same error of perspective that Martha made. The woman, for instance, who deserts the cradle in order to help defend civilization against the barbarians may well later meet, among the barbarians, her own neglected child.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Mother, Children, Home

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• A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.

  James Joyce

  Angel, Way, Youth

  James Joyce (1992). “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, p.132, Wordsworth Editions

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• ...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

  Mark Strand

  Self, Language, Disguise

  Mark Strand (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.346, Knopf

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• The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)

  Carl Sagan

  Inability, Trial And Error, Trials

  "Cosmos".

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• I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.

  Agatha Christie

  Technology, Trying, Computer

  Agatha Christie (1989). “Hallowe'en party”, Pocket

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• We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Growing Up, Children, Fall

  FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Nov 03, 2016

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• ...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Eye, Forever, Enchantment

  Peter S. Beagle (1968). “The Last Unicorn”, Roc

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• We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Views, Numbers, People

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “101 Facts of life”, p.22, Publishdrive

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