This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If we were faultless we should not be so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we associate." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. They bravely unveil their weaknesses, their doubts, their defects. They are courageous. They boldly ride a-tilt against prejudices. They love their fellow-men profoundly. They are generous. They allow their hearts to expand. They have compassion for all forms of suffering. Pity is the very foundation-stone of Genius." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"Passions are defects or virtues in the highest power." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Affectation in any part of our carriage is lighting up a candle to see our defects, and never fails to make us taken notice of, either as wanting sense or sincerity." - John Locke
"We don't love qualities, we love persons, sometimes for their defects as well as for their qualities." - Jacques Maritain
"The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?" - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"Trust not yourself; but your defects to know. Make use of every friend - and every foe." - Alexander Pope
"Never judge a work of art by its defects." - Washington Allston
"Children are very nice observers, and they will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children forgive nothing in them but everything in themselves." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age, for old age brings with it its own defects." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the 'thorn in the flesh' is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history." - Justus Möser
"No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another’s expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects." - Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
"Our chief wisdom consists in knowing our follies and faults, that we may correct them. True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it; and next to them, not the many that think they have it, but the few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not." -
"As the prudent vintager eats only ripe grapes, and gathers not those which are green, so the eyes of a wise man rests only upon the virtue of others; whereas the eyes of the fool seeks only to discover in his neighbor vices and defects." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites
"When the defects of others are perceived with too much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself." - Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
"The greatest obstacle to love is fear. It has been the source of all defects in human behavior throughout the ages." - Mahmoud Mohammed Taha
"Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, in order to show that she is only His image." - Blaise Pascal
"Nature has perfections, in order to show that she is the image of God; and defects, to show that she is only his image." - Blaise Pascal
"He that has never known adversity, is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world. for, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The noble person calls attention to the good point in others; he does not call attention to their defects. The small person does just the reverse of this." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"If we had no defects ourselves, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Suspicions amongst thoughts are like the bats amongst the birds, they ever fly by twilight: certainly they are to be repressed, or at least well guarded, for they cloud the mind, lose friends, check business, dispose kings to tyranny, husbands to jealousy, and wise men to irresolution and melancholy; they are defects, not in the heart, but in the brain." - Francis Bacon
"Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather than its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as the bad heart of Procrustes turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"How good it would be if we could learn to be rigorous in judgment of ourselves, and gentle in our judgment of our neighbors! In remedying defects, kindness works best with others, sternness with ourselves. It is easy to make allowances for our faults, but dangerous; hard to make allowances for others’ faults, but wise." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Bear patiently with the Defects of others, and labor to amend thy own." - Thomas Fuller
"We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects." - William Hazlitt
"It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become toward the defects of others." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities. " - Jacques Maritain
"Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality. " - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Our chief wisdom consists in knowing our follies and faults, that we may correct them. True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it; and next to them, not the many that think they have it, but the few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not." - John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
"No one should abandon duties because he sees defects in them. Every action, every activity, is surrounded by defects as a fire is surrounded by smoke." - Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
"Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul. " - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters." - Margaret Halsey
"We must help the child to liberate himself from his defects without making him feel his weakness." - Maria Montessori
"A father may have a child who is ugly and lacking in all the graces, and the love he feels for him puts a blindfold over his eyes so that he does not see his defects but considers them signs of charm and intelligence and recounts them to his friends as if they were clever and witty." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
"The Hindu scriptures describe the body as a product of Nature, with six defects of delusion: "It is born; it exists; it grows; it changes; it decays; it is annihilated." Most human beings nevertheless expect permanent happiness from this impermanent body. Because of the precedence of the experience of material pleasures, the ego is unwilling and unable to conceive of any higher state of happiness." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"If you investigate the matter deeply enough and widely enough, you will find that happiness eludes nearly all men despite the fact that they are forever seeking it. The fortunate and successful few are those who have stopped seeking with the ego alone and allow the search to be directed inwardly by the higher self. They alone can find a happiness unblemished by defects or deficiencies, a Supreme Good which is not a further source of pain and sorrow but an endless source of satisfaction and peace. " - Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte
"The prison population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those who are usually described as 'the criminals' proper, and of whom we have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered as preventive of anti-social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Everyone knows that absence of education, dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the happiness of others are the causes which bring this class of people before the courts. Now I was deeply impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these defects of human nature--each one of them--which the prison breeds in its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison, and will breed them so long as it exists. " - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"I do not have any teaching, which I could give humans; I do only heal defects and untie chains." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
"I do not have any teaching, which I could give humans; I do only heal defects and untie chains." - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
"The learning autobiography... is a reflective document that provides an overview of significant aspects of your educational, personal, and professional life. It demonstrates your ability to integrate the experiences of your life into a lifelong learning process; that is, it represents the ways you've assigned meaning to your own life's story. " - Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox
"Internalized experiences of selfhood are linked to autobiographical narratives, which are linked to biographies, legal testimonies, and medical case histories, which are linked to forms of therapy and theories of the subject." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny
"Against the head which innocence secures, insidious malice aims her darts in vain; turned backward by the powerful breath of heaven." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
"Political rule is so natural and necessary to the human race that it cannot be withdrawn without destroying nature itself; for the nature of man is such that he is a social animal." - Robert Bellarmine, fully Saint Robert Bellarmine