Explore Mistakes quotations through definitions and distinctions, practical consequences, different author perspectives. Compare how different writers frame the idea across distinct works and periods.
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.
An Essay on Criticism, Part III; Pope joins good nature and good sense before contrasting ordinary human error with the higher moral act of forgiveness.
“Friendship helps the young to keep from error.”
Aristotle gives friendship a practical educational role: trusted companions can help younger people avoid mistakes by supplying counsel, example and shared judgment.
Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #8438. The sentence occurs in Aristotle’s opening inventory of why friendship is necessary across different stages of life.
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
The proverb provocatively suggests that excess can teach limits through direct experience, though it is not a simple instruction to pursue excess.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell”; Blake presents the line as a deliberately paradoxical aphorism about experience and limits.
“A hasty judgement is a first step to a recantation.”
Rushing to a conclusion increases the chance that later evidence will force an embarrassing or costly reversal.
The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 8, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.
“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”
A new day is treated as a practical reset: past mistakes remain real without having to occupy every future choice.
Anne of Green Gables, Anne’s hopeful reflection about tomorrow.
“Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things.”
James resists treating every possible intellectual mistake as catastrophic, because an excessive fear of error can itself prevent inquiry, experience and the possibility of gaining truth.
The Will to Believe, essay “The Will to Believe”; Project Gutenberg #26659. James is contrasting the risk of being mistaken with the cost of refusing every uncertain intellectual venture.
“It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.”
The narrator signals immediately that a scheme which appeared profitable will become a comic disaster, making hindsight part of the joke before the plot unfolds.
“The Ransom of Red Chief,” represented in Project Gutenberg #1595. The first-person narrator introduces the kidnappers’ scheme with comic foreshadowing; the story satirizes their criminal plan rather than endorsing it.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”
Holmes argues that explanations should follow evidence because an early theory can tempt a person to force later facts into a preferred story.
“A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891), Project Gutenberg #1661. Holmes immediately warns that premature theorizing leads people to twist facts to suit theories; it is fictional detective dialogue.
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
The epigram turns a flattering word into a comic rebrand for error, suggesting that experience often arrives only after something has gone wrong.
Lady Windermere’s Fan; a characteristic Wildean epigram linking experience and mistakes.
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
The wit turns “experience” into a retrospective label for errors, suggesting that mistakes become useful only when understood.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Chapter 4; third-person narration focalized through Lord Henry reflects that experience is the name people give to their mistakes.
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.”
Failure can expose what does not work and force closer observation, turning setbacks into information that uncomplicated success may never reveal.
Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage follows Charles James Fox’s contrast between early success and perseverance after failure, then leads into examples of discoveries and learning produced through mistakes and failed attempts.
“Happy is the man who learns from the misfortunes of others.”
Other people’s failures can become instruction when we pay attention to consequences before repeating the same mistake ourselves.
Moral printed after “The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass”; the fox changes his conduct after observing the ass’s fate.
“There is a vital difference between error and untruthfulness.”
Being mistaken is separated from intentional falsehood, which allows honest uncertainty and correction without confusing every factual error with deceit.
The Power of Truth, opening chapter, Project Gutenberg #56020; Jordan distinguishes sincere error from deliberate untruthfulness.
“It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil”
Keller explicitly rejects an optimism that refuses to see harm, making clear-eyed attention to difficult facts part of her constructive outlook.
Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The following paragraph calls ignorant or indifferent optimism dangerous and false.
“Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.”
The claim values genuine conviction over calculated pose in literary work, while allowing that sincere writers can still be factually or critically mistaken.
The Principles of Success in Literature, discussion of sincerity, Project Gutenberg #10420; preserved as Lewes’s literary-critical principle rather than a universal law.
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
Razumihin values the capacity to make and correct one’s own mistakes over passive dependence on borrowed conclusions, making independent error part of an active search for truth.
Crime and Punishment, Part III, Chapter I, printed page 203 / Wikisource scan leaf 235, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. Razumihin argues that going wrong in one’s own way is better than going right in someone else’s while defending the role of making one’s own errors in reaching truth; it remains energetic fictional character dialogue rather than direct Dostoevsky autobiography.
“Error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.”
Jefferson argues that political disagreement need not be suppressed when open reasoning remains available to challenge error, treating free contest rather than coercion as the safer response to mistaken opinion.
Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, reviewed against the public-domain Wikisource transcription. The error-of-opinion sentence follows Jefferson's distinction between differences of opinion and differences of principle during an appeal for republican political tolerance; it is historical political rhetoric rather than present-day legal doctrine.
“I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed.”
Victor’s regret is inseparable from responsibility and revenge: after William and Justine’s deaths, he wishes he could reverse the act of creation whose consequences he believes he failed to foresee or govern.
Frankenstein, Chapter 9 in Project Gutenberg #84. Victor narrates the wish to extinguish the life he created after William’s murder and Justine’s execution, amid remorse, guilt, hatred and a stated desire for revenge. It is fictional first-person narration, not a healthy coping model or clinical guidance.
“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”
Answering before listening mistakes speed for competence; understanding requires enough restraint to hear the matter before judging it.
Proverbs 18:13 in the King James Version.
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
Rochester describes remorse as corrosive because wrongdoing can continue to poison later life; the scene immediately turns to the harder question of whether repentance or actual reformation can change what follows.
Jane Eyre, Project Gutenberg #1260. Rochester says this to Jane while recounting his own decline. Jane replies that repentance is said to cure remorse; Rochester answers that reformation may be its cure. This is fictional character dialogue, not Charlotte Brontë’s direct psychological advice.
“To have faults and not to reform them,—this, indeed, should be pronounced having faults.”
Making an error is less serious than refusing to correct it after the problem has become visible.
The Analects of Confucius, James Legge’s public-domain English translation; Book XV distinguishes ordinary faults from the refusal to reform them.
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
Custom can disguise error by making the familiar feel legitimate; critical judgment requires re-examining practices that have escaped scrutiny through repetition.
Common Sense (1776), Introduction. The represented opening sentence is verified in Project Gutenberg #147 and the validated scan-backed Wikisource transcription; Paine argues that familiarity can make a wrong practice appear right before public argument unsettles the custom.
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Material about failure, adversity, recovery, resilience, or learning from pressure.
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