Faults

Faults are defects or weaknesses of character.

Quotes

• Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
  Not for thy faults, but mine.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 77.

• The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), Chapter II.

• Who mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth;
  If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation (1774), line 24.

• Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Lady Anne Granard (or Keeping up Appearances) (1841 posthumous) (1838) Vol. I, chapter 2

• Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.
  • James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics (1848), line 28.

• You crystal break, for fear of breaking it:
  Careless and careful hands like faults commit.
  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), Book XIV, Epigram 111. Translation by Wright.

• The glorious fault of angels and of gods.
  • Alexander Pope, To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717), line 14.

• I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act III, scene 2, line 298.

• Every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it.
  • William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act III, scene 2, line 372.

• Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
  When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 4, line 37.

• So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act IV, scene 2, line 31.

• 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, King John (1598), Act IV, scene 2, line 30.

• All's not offence that indiscretion finds.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 198.

• Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
  Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done;
  Mine were the very cipher of a function,
  To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
  And let go by the actor.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act II, scene 2, line 37.

• Go to your bosom;
  Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
  That's like my brother's fault.
  • William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act II, scene 2, line 136.

• Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
  Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
  And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
  All men make faults.
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXV.

• Her only fault, and that is faults enough,
  Is that she is intolerable curst
  And shrewd and froward, so beyond all measure
  That, were my state far worser than it is,
  I would not wed her for a mine of gold.
  • William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1593-94), Act I, scene 2, line 88.

• Faults that are rich are fair.
  • William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (date uncertain, published 1623), Act I, scene 2, line 13.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 265-67.

• Suus quoque attributus est error:
  Sed non videmus, manticæ quid in tergo est.
  • Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.
  • Catullus, Carmina, XXII. 20.

• Ea molestissime ferre homines debent quæ ipsorum culpa ferenda sunt.
  • Men ought to be most annoyed by the sufferings which come from their own faults.
  • Cicero, Epistolæ Ad Fratrem, I. 1.

• Est proprium stultitiæ aliorum vitia cernere, oblivisci suorum.
  • It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others, and to forget his own.
  • Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum, III. 30.

• Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy;
  Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I.
  • Christopher Codrington, On Garth's Dispensary.

• Men still had faults, and men will have them still;
  He that hath none, and lives as angels do,
  Must be an angel.
  • Wentworth Dillon, Miscellanies, On Mr. Dryden's Religio Laici, line 8.

• The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces.
  • Isaac D'Israeli, Essay on the Literary Character, Preface. p, XXIX and Volume I, p. 187.

• Heureux l'homme quand il n'a pas les défauts de ses qualités.
  • Happy the man when he has not the defects of his qualities.
  • Bishop Dupanloup.

• Do you wish to find out a person's weak points? Note the failings he has the quickest eye for in others. They may not be the very failings he is himself conscious of; but they will be their next-door neighbors. No man keeps such a jealous lookout as a rival.
  • J. C. and W. A. Hare, Guesses at Truth.

• His very faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities.
  • Washington Irving, Sketch Book, John Bull.

• Bad men excuse their faults, good men will leave them.
  • Ben Jonson, Catiline, Act III, scene 2.

• Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes?
  • Who'd bear to hear the Gracchi chide sedition? (Listen to those who denounce what they do themselves).
  • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), II. 24.

• Qui s'excuse, s'accuse.
  • He who excuses himself, accuses himself.
  • Gabriel Meurier, Tresor des Sentences.

• Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, nemo!
  Sed præcedenti spectatur mantica tergo.
  • That no one, no one at all, should try to search into himself! But the wallet of the person in front is carefully kept in view.
  • Persius, Satires, IV. 24.

• Peras imposuit Jupiter nobis duas.
  Propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit;
  Alienis ante pectus suspendit gravem.
  • Jupiter has placed upon us two wallets. Hanging behind each person's back he has given one full of his own faults; in front he has hung a heavy one full of other people's.
  • Phaedrus, Fables, Book IV. 9. 1.

• Quia, qui alterum incusat probi, eum ipsum se intueri oportet.
  • Because those, who twit others with their faults, should look at home.
  • Plautus, Truculentus, I. 2. 58.

• Nihil peccat, nisi quod nihil peccat.
  • He has no fault except that he has no fault.
  • Pliny the Younger, Epistles, Book LX. 26.

• Amici vitium ni feras, prodis tuum.
  • Unless you bear with the faults of a friend, you betray your own.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Invitat culpam qui delictum præterit.
  • He who overlooks a fault, invites the commission of another.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• For tho' the faults were thick as dust
  In vacant chambers, I could trust
  Your kindness.
  • Alfred Tennyson, To the Queen, Stanza 5.