Defects Quotes - Page 16

• What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Judging, Crime

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• Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Virtue

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• There are no perfect women in the world; only hypocrites exhibit no defects.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Hypocrite, Perfect, World

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• You marry the day you realize the human defects of your love.

  Anais Nin

  Realizing, Humans, Shortcomings

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• Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Perfection, Gold

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.113

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• Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.

  James Russell Lowell

  Criticism, Moral, Teach

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.97

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• Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.

  James Russell Lowell

  Believe, Imagination, Sensual

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1162, Delphi Classics

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• Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Vision, World, Cynicism

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• The defects of a preacher are soon spied.

  Martin Luther

  Clergymen, Preacher

  Martin Luther, Johann Aurifaber, Anton Lauterbach, Henry Bell (1832). “Luther's Table Talk: Or, Some Choice Fragments from the Familiar Discourse of that Godly, Learned Man, and Famous Champion of God's Truth, Martin Luther”, p.232

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• A great man la an abstraction of some one excellence; but whoever fancies himself an abstraction of excellence, so far from being great, may be sure that he is a blockhead, equally ignorant of excellence or defect of himself or others.

  William Hazlitt

  Men, Ignorant, Excellence

  William Hazlitt (2005). “The Fight and Other Writings”, p.464, Penguin UK

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• Affectation naturally counterfeits those excellences which are placed at the greatest distance from possibility of attainment, because, knowing our own defects, we eagerly endeavor to supply them with artificial excellence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Distance, Knowing, Excellence

  Samuel Johnson (1851). “The beauties of Johnson: choice selections from his works”, p.9

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• Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wine, Men, Drunk

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.64

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• All the dignity of man consists in thought. Thought is therefore by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing. It must have strange defects to be contemptible. But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous. How great it is in its nature! How vile it is in its defects! But what is this thought? How foolish it is!

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Ridiculous, Strange

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works”, p.124, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Taste, Causes, Judgment

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.19

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• it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.

  Jane Austen

  Prejudice, Littles, Vexation

  Jane Austen (1853). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.18

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• Idiocy is the female defect ... It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy.

  Rebecca West

  Males, Female, Idiocy

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.7, Open Road Media

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• The very essence of gravity was design, and, consequently, deceit; it was a taught trick to gain credit of the world for more sense end knowledge than a man was worth; and that with all its pretensions it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it--a mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.

  Laurence Sterne

  Men, Essence, Long Ago

  Laurence Sterne (1834). “The Works of Laurence Sterne, in One Volume”, p.17

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• Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.

  Jeremy Collier

  Honesty, Book, Mean

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• One little human truth is that opinionated people don't hold much with other people's opinions, and it is a great pleasure to some of them to be able to ascribe incurable defects, such as belonging to a certain sex; or base motives, or lack of understanding, to anyone whose views they disagree with.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Sex, Views, People

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• There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.

  Abraham Cowley

  Cutting, Men, Wish

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.221

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• These flattering mirrors reflect imperfectly what is within; the countenance is often a gay deceiver. What defects of mind lie hidden under its beauty! What fair exteriors conceal base souls!

  Pierre Corneille

  Lying, Gay, Mirrors

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• There are times when the thing we are seeing changes before our very eyes, and if it is a landscape we praise nature, and if it is celestial we invoke God, but if it is a loved one who defects, we excuse ourselves and say we have to be somewhere and are already late for our next appointment. We do not stay to put pennies over the half-dead eyes.

  Edna O'Brien

  Eye, Half, Landscape

  Edna O'Brien (1974). “A Scandalous Woman, and Other Stories”

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• I've written about a lot of different things, but the whole idea of writing for another character is unusual for pop music... Most of the repertory is love songs, and most of mine isn't. I don't know if that's a mental defect, or shyness, or what.

  Randy Newman

  Song, Writing, Character

  "Set List: Randy Newman". Interview with Sam Adams, music.avclub.com. May 31, 2011.

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• Surrogate experience and surrogate environments have become the American way of life. Distinctions are no longer made, or deemed necessary, between the real and the false; the edge usually goes to the latter, as an improved version with defects corrected - accessible and user-friendly.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Real, Friendly, Way

  "The Pasteboard Past" by Witold Rybczynski, www.nytimes.com. April 6, 1997.

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• I always introduce myself as an encyclopedia of defects which I do not deny. Why should I? It took me a whole life to build myself as I am.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Introducing, Deny, Should

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