Great Throughts Treasury

"In most quarrels there is fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow." - Charles Caleb Colton

"The real fault is to have faults and not to amend them." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"It is bootless to discuss accomplished facts, to protect against things past remedy, to find fault with things bygone." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"The only thing that separates us from Buddha is that the Buddha doesn’t find fault. When there are thoughts, there are thoughts. When there is judgment, there is judgment. When there is no judgment, no judgment. Why judge the judger? Why condemn yourself all the time? Let yourself be! Let the true nature of things just be, then everything passes away naturally." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

"Get into the habit of being both strict and friendly toward yourself; demand a certain standard of performance; approve of yourself, even reward yourself if you attain it. For too often we pursue just the wrong tactics. When we should be acting, we indulge or excuse ourselves for inactivity; we then upbraid and punish ourselves ruthlessly and futility. The scolding is futile because we somehow feel that, if we have been severe and cutting to ourselves, we have in some way atoned for the fault of non-performance. We have not, of course. We have not done what we planned, and we have discouraged and hurt ourselves in the bargain." - Dorothea Brande

"Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie; a fault which needs it most grows two thereby." - George Herbert

"Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy; calmness is a great advantage." - George Herbert

"Be calm in argument; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy. Why should I feel another man’s mistakes more than his sicknesses or poverty? In love I should: but anger is not love, nor wisdom either; therefore gently move. Calmness is great advantage; he that lets another chafe may warm him at his fire, mark all his wand’rings and enjoy his frets, as cunning fencers suffer heat to tire." - George Herbert

"Let us all resolve, first, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault-finding that does not good a sin, and to resolve, when we are ourselves happy, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling upon them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature in their daily life, third, to practice the grace and virtue of praise." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Now when I bore people at a party, they think it's their fault." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Change a virtue in its circumstances and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges." - Hippolyte Adolphe Taine

"Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his superior." - John Churton Collins

"Everyone is eagle-eyed to see another's fault and deformity." - John Dryden

"The question is now what a man can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what he can love and value and appreciate." - John Ruskin

"It is stupid to complain about misfortune that is your own fault." - Latin Proverbs

"The first fault is the child of simplicity, but every other the offspring of guilt." - Oliver Goldsmith

"Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity. The ignorant peasant without fault is greater than the philosopher with many. What is genius or courage without a heart?" - Oliver Goldsmith

"For the first time, the best may err, art may persuade and novelty spread out its charms. The first fault is the child of simplicity; but every other the offspring of guilt." - Oliver Goldsmith

"Let a fault be concealed by its nearness to a virtue." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

"There are times when patience proves at fault." - Robert Browning

"The only fault's with time; all men become good creatures: but so slow!" - Robert Browning

"My friend is he who will tell me my fault in private." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"God hath thus ordered it, that we may learn to bear one another’s burdens; for no man is without fault, no man without his burden, no man sufficient of himself, no man wise enough of himself; but we ought to bear with one another, comfort one another, help, instruct, and admonish one another. " - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"He will be immortal who liveth till he be stoned by one without fault." - Thomas Fuller

"Ingratitude is the abridgment of all baseness, a fault never found unattended with other viciousness." - Thomas Fuller

"Suspicion may be no Fault, but showing it may be a great one." - Thomas Fuller

"And oftentimes, excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, - as patches, set upon a little breach, discredit more in hiding of the fault than did the fault before it was so patched." - William Shakespeare

"Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." - William Shakespeare

"The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars," - William Shakespeare

"Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side." -

"If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"The law does not fawn on the noble; the string does not yield to the crooked. Whatever the law applies to, the wise cannot reject nor can the brave defy. Punishment for fault never skips ministers, reward for good never misses commoners. Therefore, to correct the faults of the high, to rebuke the vices of the low, to suppress disorders, to decide against mistakes, to subdue the arrogant, to straighten the crooked, and to unify the folkways of the masses, nothing could match the law. To warn the officials and overawe the people, to rebuke obscenity and danger, and to forbid falsehood and deceit, nothing could match penalty. If penalty is severe, the noble cannot discriminate against the humble. If law is definite, the superiors are esteemed and not violated. If the superiors are not violated, the sovereign will become strong and able to maintain the proper course of government. Such was the reason why the early kings esteemed legalism and handed it down to posterity. Should the lord of men discard law and practice selfishness, high and low would have no distinction. Hence to govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong." - Han Fei, also Han Fei Zi, Han Feitzu and Han Fei Tzu

"While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect." - Jacques Cousteau, formally Hacques-Yves Cousteau, known as 'le Commandant Cousteau' or 'Captain Cousteau'

"The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"What this country needs is more people to inspire others with confidence, and fewer people to discourage any initiative in the right direction more to get into the thick of things, fewer to sit on the sidelines, merely finding fault more to point out what's right with the world, and fewer to keep harping on what's wrong with it and more who are interested in lighting candles, and fewer who blow them out. " - James Keller

"There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behaves any of us to find fault with the rest of us. " - James Truslow Adams

"Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage" - Jeremy Collier

"I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution "schools" very well, though it does not "educate"; that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing." - John Taylor Gatto

"Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility. " - Jonathan Miller, fully Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller

"How utterly futile debauchery seems once it has been accomplished, and what ashes of disgust it leaves in the soul! The pity of it is that the soul outlives the body, or in other words that impression judges sensation and that one thinks about and finds fault with the pleasure one has taken." - Jules de Goncourt, fully Jules Huot de Goncourt

"Obstinacy is a fault of temperament. Stubbornness and intolerance of contradiction result from a special kind of egotism, which elevates above everything else the pleasure of its autonomous intellect, to which others must bow." - Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz

"One man's fault is another man's lesson." - Maltese Proverbs

"From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility." - Mario Vargas Llosa, fully Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa

"The president of the National Education Association was once asked when his union was going to do something about students. He replied that when the students became members of the union, the union would take care of them. And that was a correct answer. Why? His responsibility as president of the NEA was to serve the members of his union, not to serve public purposes. I give him credit: The trade union has been very effective in serving its members. However, in the process, they've destroyed American education. But you see, education isn't the union's function. It's our fault for allowing the union to pursue its agenda. Consider this fact: There are two areas in the United States that suffer from the same disease—education is one and health care is the other. They both suffer from the disease that takes a system that should be bottom-up and converts it into a system that is top-down. Education is a simple case. It isn't the public purpose to build brick schools and have students taught there. The public purpose is to provide education. Think of it this way: If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students." - Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

"The exercise of religious duty will not atone for the fault of an abusive tongue." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"Happy is the person who finds fault with himself instead of finding fault with others." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

"People with wisdom know that it is important to correct their own mistakes, while people without wisdom find it necessary to point out the mistakes of others. People with strong faith know that it is important to clear their own hearts, while those with unsteady faith seek to find fault in the hearts and prayers of others. This becomes a habit in their lives. But those who pray to Allah with faith, determination, and certitude know that the most important thing in life is to surrender their hearts to Allah." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen