quotations about mistakes
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Cambridge Thirty Years Ago
To err is human, but it feels divine.
MAE WEST
The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West
I never make the same mistake twice. I make it five or six times, you know, just to be sure.
ANONYMOUS
An error is not a mistake until you refuse to correct it.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
If you want to condemn yourself for the mistakes you've made, let's be fair, that means you've got to congratulate yourself for all the good things you've done. It's okay to say, "God, I wish I'd done this; yeah, but I did do that." Then it kind of balances out.
TIM ALLEN
Reader's Digest, October 2001
Mistakes are information about what works and what doesn't work. They have nothing to do with your worth or intelligence. They are merely steps to a goal.
JOHN BRADSHAW
Healing the Shame that Binds You
The errors of a man are what make him really lovable.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
He that finds out he's changed his lot for worse,
Let him betimes the untoward choice reverse:
For still, when all is said, the rule stands fast,
That each man's shoe be made on his own last.
HORACE
Epistles
You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.
GENEEN ROTH
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
AL FRANKEN
Oh, the Things I Know
When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.
PAULO COELHO
Brida
Even honest men mistake oftener in their own favor than in other peoples.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
The noblest spirits are most sensible of the possibility of Error: and the weakest do most hardly lay down an Error.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Our failures or mistakes give us important feedback on what we need to change or concentrate on in the future.
DANA LIGHTMAN
Power Optimism
I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
GENE FOWLER
Skyline
Man undertakes nothing in which he is not more or less puzzled; he must try numberless experiments before he can bring his undertakings to anything like perfection; and these experiments imply a succession of mistakes.
JANE TAYLOR
The Contributions of Q. Q.
Life, like war, is a series of mistakes; and he is not the best Christian nor the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that; but he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes; organize victory out of mistakes.
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers