We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals?
There is a certain kind of pain that can change you. Even the strongest sword, when placed in a raging fire, will soften and bend and change its form... Trust me on this one. I know this from personal experience. I hope that you never will, but, since you're a person, and therefore prone to making horrible, soul-splitting mistakes, you probably will one day know what this kind of guilt and shame feels like. And when that time comes, I hope you have the strength...to take advantage of the fire and reshape your own sword.
Is enjoyment the goal of life? Were it so, it would be a tremendous mistake to become a man at all. What man can enjoy a meal with more gusto than the dog or the cat ? Go to a menagerie and see the [wild animals] tearing the flesh from the bone. Go back and become a bird! . . . What a mistake then to become a man! Vain have been my years - hundreds of years - of struggle only to become the man of sense-enjoyments.
Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.
POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.
If you want to liberate someone, love them.Not be in love with them - that's dangerous. If you're in love with your children, you're in their lives all the time. Leave them alone! Let them grow and make some mistakes. Tell them, "You can come home. My arms are here - and my mouth is too." When you really love them, you don't want to possess them. You don't say, "I love you and I want you here with me."
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man;
But it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.
I never made a mistake in my life;
At least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards
The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.
I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime.
A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.
Arguments from authority carry little weight – authorities have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
It has therewith come to be recognized that the history of moral valuations is at the same time the history of an error, the error of responsibility, which is based upon the error of the freedom of will.