mistakes Quotes

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”

“Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.”

“That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly.”

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

“But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice.” “I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new ones.”

“What’s done cannot be undone.”

“I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.”

It is a comfort not to be mistaken at all points. Do I not know it only too well!

“This boat that we just built is just fine— And don’t try to tell us it’s not. The sides and the back are divine— It’s the bottom I guess we forgot. . . .”

“I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.”

“That was her mistake. She’d pinned her happiness to a teenage girl’s chest. Idiot. The realization made her almost smile. She certainly knew better than that.”

“A line comes back to Marie-Laure from Jules Verne: Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused!”

“From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man. Not a mistake has been made in the working. But we cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

“But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit”

“How can I make him understand that he did not create me? He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don’t understand there are human feelings involved.”

“‘You must never feel badly about making mistakes,’ explained Reason quietly, ‘as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.‘”

“She didn’t in the least mind being accused of having done something she had actually done. She could see the justice of that. It was, however, a totally new experience for her to be accused of a crime that she definitely had not committed.”

“No matter how careful I am, eventually I’ll make another misstep. I am weak. I am fragile. I am mortal.”

“None of my ten friends, even today, ascribes moral evil to Hitler, although most of them think (after the fact) that he made fatal strategical mistakes which even they themselves might have made at the time. His worst mistake was his selection of advisers—a backhand tribute to the Leader’s virtues of trustfulness and loyalty, to his very innocence of the knowledge of evil, fully familiar to those who have heard partisans of F. D. R. or Ike explain how things went wrong.”

“I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologize to anyone injured by my misreckoning.”

“It’s especially hard to admit that you made a mistake to your parents, because, of course, you know so much more than they do.”

“I think everyone makes a mistake at least once in their life. The important thing is what you learn from it.”

“And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion. And whenever those twin poisonous flowers began to sprout in the parched land of that field, Mariam uprooted them. She uprooted them and ditched them before they took hold.”

“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t. I just watched. Paralyzed.”

″‘Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall’, the paratroopers liked to say. ‘He forgot to put a roof on it.‘”

“Intelligence takes chance with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.”

“And of course I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as clear as daylight, but, listen, who does not make mistakes?”

“I know the mistakes you made were not deliberate or malicious […] Your grandfather must share the blame for placing you children in a situation where opening a window with kind intentions could cause such harm and destruction. And clearly the fiends who abducted him are ultimately the most culpable.”

“I want to confess everything, to hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else.”

“At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.”

“But - but the greatest way to witness is by walking that straight and narrow and also realizing that you’re going to mess up. That’s what grace is for. We’re going to fall, but we’ve got to get back up. And you’ve got to improve. And that’s what I’m all about.”

“I want you to know, Stanley, that I respect you,” Mr. Pendanski said. “I understand you’ve made some bad mistakes in your life. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But everyone makes mistakes. You may have done some bad things, but that doesn’t mean you’re a bad kid.” Stanley nodded. It seemed pointless to try and tell his counselor that he was innocent. He figured that everyone probably said that.

“Well, let me tell you something, Caveman. You are here on account of one person. If it wasn’t for that person, you wouldn’t be here digging holes in the hot sun” […] “That person is you, Stanley. You’re the reason you are here. You’re responsible for yourself. You messed up your life.”

“I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. ”

“Shame is the emotion which gives us permission to be human. Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes, and that we need help.”

“I’m not bragging when I say that I’m one of the best liars in the world but I got to tell you, Todd was pretty doggone good. It seemed like he knew some of the things I know, the things I think of all the time and try to remember so I don’t make the same mistake more than seven or eight times.”

“There are no mistakes, only opportunities.”

It’s not given to people to judge what’s right or wrong. People have eternally been mistaken and will be mistaken, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.

“The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.”

“Learning from mistakes helps prevent the repetition of negative patterns.”

“Seth realized he had made the worst mistake of his life, and that now he would die. Why hadn’t he waited to open the cocoon? Why was he so impatient?”

“After learning , please be realistic. Give yourself a permission to keep making mistakes. We must also give ourselves the gift of understanding that we can’t remember everything we learned at once.”

″‘[I]t would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.’ Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.”

“Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on the greater achievements of the future.”

“If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. And they must be connected. There must be an organic unity between them.”

“One misstep was all it took, and it all came crashing down. And they were right there waiting for it—eager and ready to bury me in the wreckage.”

″‘Lord King, slay me speedily as a great traitor: for by my silence I have destroyed your son.’ And [Drinian] told [Caspian] the story. Then Caspian caught up a battle-axe and rushed upon the Lord Drinian to kill him, and Drinian stood still as a stock for the death blow. But when the axe was raised, Caspian suddenly threw it away and cried out, ‘I have lost my queen and my son: shall I lose my friend also?’ And he fell upon the Lord Drinian’s neck and embraced him and both wept, and their friendship was not broken.”

“‘You met the Witch?’ said Aslan in a low voice which had the threat of a growl in it. ‘She woke up,’ said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, ‘I mean, I woke her. Because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn’t want to. It wasn’t her fault. I—I fought her. I know I shouldn’t have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the bell.’ ‘Do you?’ asked Aslan; still speaking very low and deep. ‘No,’ said Digory. ‘I see now I wasn’t. I was only pretending.‘”

″‘It is very true,’ said Edmund. ‘But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.’ And he looked very thoughtful.”

“As he that walks in slippery places is ... liable to fall, he can’t foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without warning.”

“The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.”

“I do not want you to waste your life in dreams, like your father.”

“But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.”

“Some people think they have discernment when actually they are just suspicious.”

“I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid.”

“I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking.”

“Everyone makes mistakes, even if some are worse than others. Accidents happen.”

“Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!”

“The true character of a person is not seen in their everyday routine or even in their greatest accolades; the true test of a person’s character is witnessing the immediate steps after one of their greatest mistakes.‘”

“Transgressions past May be amended, cannot be made worse.”

“To err is common To all men, but the man who having erred Hugs not his errors, but repents and seeks The cure, is not a wastrel nor unwise.”

″‘A demon can get into real trouble, doing the right thing.’ He nudged the angel. ‘Funny if we both got it wrong, eh? Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?‘”

“It would be very nice to come home and be in the wrong house. To eat dinner with the wrong people by mistake, sleep in the wrong bed by mistake, and kiss everybody good-bye in the morning thinking they were your own family.”

“Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we ascribe meaning to.”

“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”

“From everything you told me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger. And both of us had second chances.”

“Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and as such should be seen as valuable; without them we have no originality).”

“If we allow more people to solve problems without permission, and if we tolerate (and don’t vilify) their mistakes, then we enable a much larger set of problems to be addressed. When a random problem pops up in this scenario, it causes no panic, because the threat of failure has been defanged.”

“Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for their father’s mistakes....”

“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led–yes. But not tightly managed.”

“Don’t let them slow you down. Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”

“It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that.”

“It’s important that you know. Our family memory must not be lost.”

“The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that’s all.”

“That our project has crashed is not a reflection of our worth as human beings. It’s just a mistake. It’s a problem – and a problem can be solved.”

“As you sit back doing nothing because you are afraid to make a mistake, someone else is out there making all kinds of mistakes, learning from them, and getting to where you wanted to be. And probably laughing at your weakness.”

“One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It’s not and it won’t. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about what’s wrong with life. “It’s not fair,” we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be.”

“Of all the world’s errors, he seemed to feel, the most fundamental was the ‘erasing’ of people, the ‘hiding away’ of suffering.’”

“Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.”

“It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the more likely to do them again.”

“I named her when I was a toddler, and now I don’t get a do-over, and me and my sisters all have to call her Gamma-Gamma. It’s embarrassing. I guess we all make mistakes when we’re young.”

“I’m like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.”

“A calm came over Lito, as though he’d come to some sort of understanding, some decision. ‘I see if now, Chabela. All of it. The past, the present, the future. All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. Fro the bright promise of manana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabela: It didn’t. Because I didn’t change it. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.‘”

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”

“I can’t believe I am in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.”

“All humans make mistakes. What determine a person’s character aren’t the mistakes we make. It is how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.”

“If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.”

“The basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal!”

“I’ve just been handed this bulletin--Commissioner James Gordon has been shot and killed--oops! Sorry, folks I read it wrong...Gordon has shot and killed a seventeen-year-old member of the mutant gang...”

“I had a dream about you last night. Eons ago, we created a Universe, then sat back and watched miniature versions of ourselves try to make all the same mistakes we did.”

“All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.”

“I failed my daughter, and my family and my myself. At least that’s what I believed at the time-that’s what I felt in my heart, in my bones, and in every atom of my body.”

“I. Felt. Ashamed. Ashamed, and embarrassed and stupid, because I had brought home the wrong child and I didn’t even know it.”

“Where were my instincts? Isn’t the female of the species hardwired to recognize her own offspring?”

″... in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors.”

“Errors become mistakes when we perceive them and respond to them incorrectly. Mistakes become failures when we continually respond to them incorrectly.”

“Welcome to BigMistake.com Population: untold million.”

“Moreover, in this way they can rejoice in the illusion of never having made a mistake; for act follows so swiftly on act that it is impossible to reconstruct the past and say that an alternative decision would have been better. ”

“I can’t help but feel you’re making a mistake in not allowing that woman to talk. If she gets around at all, she may have picked up some very interesting little news items.”

″ ‘We will have to shut you up where you can’t do any more harm.’ They took him away and shut him in prison.”

“In the city if he made a mistake usually there was a way to rectify it, make it all right...Now it was different, and all so quick, all so incredibly quick.”

″ I never saw more honey! Never! Now don’t you think your dad is clever?”

“Oh dear. I’m late.”

“Time out.”

″...I was walking along and I guess I got careless. I guess I got gawking at dasies and not looking where I was walking...”

“He knew at once that he had made a mistake. Old Chudleigh Pomeroy wasn’t bad as Guildsmen went, but he didn’t like being answered back by a mere Third Class Apprentice.”

″‘Stop!’ yelled Big Anthony. But the pasta did not stop and if someone hadn’t grabbed poor Big Anthony, the pasta would have covered him up. ”

“I throw a stick, and he brings it back to me. He makes mistakes sometimes.”

“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

“Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”

“I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday.”

“People make mistakes, Holding to their own, Thinking they’re alone.”

“Mistakes were meant to be learned from, overcome. They weren’t meant to destroy.”

“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake.”

“We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.”

“Don’t dwell on your mistakes,”

“Dave tried to explain to the lady that it was his Dogger, who had got lost and somehow been put on the stall by mistake, but she wasn’t listening.”

“We’re more than our mistakes. We’re more than what people expect of us.”

“For the first time in his life, Senator Trueba admitted he had made a mistake. ”

“The recurrence of this mirrors the recurrence in our own lives of the same problems and mistakes, forming negative patterns. It is hard to learn from experience”

“the degree of awareness represents the difference. Rational people can readily admit their own irrational tendencies and the need to be vigilant. On the other hand, irrational people become highly emotional when challenged about the emotional roots of their decisions. They are incapable of introspection and learning. Their mistakes”

The Elves, time travelers from the 21st century, have found a way back to the 16th century and plan to do their own plundering of the land’s rich natural resources. Their only mistake is foolishly underestimating the Sterkarms themselves.

“And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don’t they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it’s been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.”

“When Amos Diggory asked for the Time-Turner my father denied they even existed. He lied to an old man who just wanted his son back—who just loved his son. And he did it because he didn’t care—because he doesn’t care. Everyone talks about all the brave things Dad did. But he made some mistakes too. Some big mistakes, in fact. I want to set one of those mistakes right. I want us to save Cedric.”

“This is not to imply that we agree on everything because we don’t. Nor does it mean there are no arguments because there are. It does mean there is never any maliciousness or bitterness in our differences. It does mean each is willing to admit a mistake and apologize if he or she is wrong. It means we enjoy each other and love each other enough to put the other one first. We never part company or go to sleep without settling our differences and reaffirming our love. We’re both grateful that God has let us spend enough years together to develop a relationship and discover what real love is all about. Our prayer is that God will permit us to have many more years together before we start our walk though eternity—together.”

“I haven’t the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to do. But I really think that you had better not meddle with little American girls that are uncultivated, as you call them. You have lived too long out of the country. You will be sure to make some great mistake.”

“Some people think, because I’m not very big, that I’m not very strong.”

“Billy knew he had been infallible before that, and now he was capable of failure. ”

“In desperation Bruce scrunched himself up into a ball, hoping the witch would mistake him for part of the rock. But there was no chance of fooling old Roxy, and holding her lantern out over the creek she spotted the bear in a flash.”

“Learn from my mistakes, [...] and learn from my joys. Surround yourself with those who’ll love you always, through your mistakes and your faults. Make a family that will find you more beautiful every day, even when your hair is white with age. Be the light that makes someone’s lantern shine.”

So they left him in it; and Christopher Robin went back to lunch with his friends Pooh and Piglet, and on the way they told him of the Awful Mistake they had made. And when he had finished laughing, they all sang the Outdoor Song for Snowy Weather the rest of the way home, Piglet, who was still not quite sure of his voice, putting in the tiddely-poms again.

“Guess there’s some mistake,” he said. “Mrs. Spencer came off the train with that girl and gave her into my charge. Said you and your sister were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for her presently. That’s all I know about it—and I haven’t got any more orphans concealed hereabouts.”

“I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Barry. I assure you once for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Diana and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t it, Marilla?” “I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Barry’s head

“I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don’t make, although I might.”

“There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. I can’t use you.”

Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life.

“Oh, dear, what a blunderbuss I am!”

“A man’s life is of more consequence than one evening’s neglect of the horses: somebody must go,”

“Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but that’s no fault of mine.”

“Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we’re doing our best, afore she comes, to—

“To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

“Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment.”

You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

“You married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s admit.”

“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.”