Great Throughts Treasury

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." - Samuel Smiles

"The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it." -

"Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation." - Tibetan Saying NULL

"We often mistake a desire of the body for a yearning of the soul." - Harry Wolfson, fully Harry Austryn Wolfson

"To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life." - Joe Boot

"Personal growth is often the result not of doing something new, but of seeing the same things in a new light. We all have mental maps of our world that we mistake for the actual territory. By clinging on to old maps we fail to see the true lie of the land and get lost." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom – one helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life." - Sandra Carey

"It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"Where religion goes wrong it is because, in one form or another, men have made the mistake of trying to turn to God without turning away from self." - Aelred Graham

"Never mistake motion for action." -

"The advocate can make no greater mistake than to ignore or attempt to conceal the weak points in his case. The most effective strategy is at an early stage of the argument to invite attention to your weakest point before the court has discovered it, then to meet it with the best answers at your disposal, to deal with all the remaining points with equal candor and to end with as powerful a presentation of your strongest point as you are capable of making." -

"A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience." - Doug Larson

"The mistake the world is making with the simple peoples is to try and hurry them into political concepts they don’t understand and aren’t prepared to cope with. I know. I am a peasant myself." - Ramón Magsaysay

"What is it? Is man only God’s mistake or God only man’s mistake?" - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Man’s greatest mistake is in trying to become God instead of simply being. He has been looking for something that is right within himself." - Baird T. Spalding

"It is important to acknowledge a mistake instantly, correct it, and learn from it. That literally turns a failure into a success. Success is on the far side of failure." - Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

"Fret not over bygones and the forward journey take. Only a short distance have I gone astray, and I know today I am right, if yesterday was a complete mistake… Ah, homeward bound I go! Let me from now on learn to live alone! The world and I are not made for one another, and why drive round like one looking for what he has not found?" -

"In summary, goals or end-states are not intrinsically valuable, even though they direct and explain action. Although having aims or goals is an important and unavoidable aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because this would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are valuable to achieve because they lead to further worthwhile activities." - Garrett Thomson

"There are countless dimensions of interpretation, and this is why it is a mistake to refer to the meaning of one’s life as if there were only one." - Garrett Thomson

"We are not merely instruments, either for our own goals or for those of God. This is why it is a mistake to identify the meaning of life with a goal…. This does not imply that our own goals are not and should not be important to our lives… just that they are not the meaning of life in themselves." - Garrett Thomson

"Humor: The ability to laugh at any mistake you survive." -

"All learning involves trying something and seeing what happens. If one will not try anything until he is assured that he will not make a mistake in whatever he does, he will never be able to learn anything new at all." - David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm

"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." - Richard Carlson

"Man's biggest mistake is to believe that he's working for someone else." - Nashua Cavalier

"Do not mistake a goats beard for a fine stallion’s tail." - Hank Dittmar

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein

"One of the most meaningful gifts a parent can give a child is to admit her own mistake: to say, "I was wrong here," or, "I'm sorry."" - John Gottman and Nan Silver

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." -

"In school, you are given the lesson first. On the street, you're given the mistake first and then it's up to you to find the lesson, if you ever find it." - Robert Kiyosaki, fully Robert Toru Kiyosaki

"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." - Dale E. Turner

"Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something." - Morihei Ueshiba

"There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Every human being has his own gate. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our own." -

"We too often mistake the form of an experience for its essence. We worship the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and not the Spirit itself." - Alan Cohen

"We too often mistake the form of an experience for its essence. We worship the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and not the Spirit itself." -

"We too often mistake the form of an experience for its essence. We worship the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and not the Spirit itself." -

"Man is what he is, not that which can be expressed. True the aim of all awareness is to express that which is, but expression is a slow, elusive task, and it is a mistake to assume that anything incapable of being stated in words does not exist." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Human life must be some kind of mistake… Existence has no real value in itself." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Author Unknown NULL

"It may be a mistake to mix different wines, but old and new wisdom mix admirably." - Bertolt Brecht

"Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life, is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle. It is by what we do ourselves that we learn." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"All err the more dangerously because each follows the truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth." - Blaise Pascal

"Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a mean to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end." - Charles Caleb Colton

"A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"In competition for prestige it seems only sensible to try to perfect our image rather than ourselves. That seems the most economical, direct way to produce the desired result. Accustomed to live in a world of pseudo-events, celebrities, dissolving forms, and shadowy but overshadowing images, we mistake our shadows for ourselves. To us they seem more real than the reality." - Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin

"In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one." - Elbert Green Hubbard

"Do not mistake a child for his symptom." -

"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR

"Only he who does nothing makes a mistake." - French Proverbs