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“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.
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“No man is an island, entire of itself.”
Donne argues against imagining people as self-contained units; individual life is bound up with the lives of others.
Source note: Meditation XVII.
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“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
Voice: Fictional character · Countess of Roussillon
The advice combines generosity with judgment: goodwill can be broad while trust remains selective.
Source note: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1; the Countess gives Bertram compact advice about conduct before he leaves.
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“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Friendship is treated as reciprocal practice rather than something one can demand without embodying it.
Source note: Essay “Friendship.”
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“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.”
The family is presented as a highly interdependent human arrangement in which different roles and needs support one another.
Source note: The Life of Reason, Reason in Society; the sentence opens a discussion of family bonds and reciprocal interests.
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“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Another person’s loss is not completely separate from us because human lives participate in a shared condition.
Source note: Meditation XVII; modernized capitalization.