mistakes

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.

There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.

Some of us learn from other people's mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.

We made too many wrong mistakes.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hope soon to be swept away.

Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally, I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced; and the bountiful blind girl doth most mistake in her gifts to women. "Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

Mistakes are the inevitable accompaniment of the greatest gift given to man, - individual freedom of action. Let us be glad of the dignity of our privilege to make mistakes, glad of the wisdom that enables us to recognize them, glad of the power that permits us to turn their light as a glowing illumination along the pathway of our future. Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. Without them there would be no individual growth, no progress, no conquest.

Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live. Mistakes are always part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul. Man becomes great, not through never making mistakes, but by profiting by those he does make; by being satisfied with a single rendition of a mistake, not encoring it into a continuous performance; by getting from it the honey of new, regenerating inspiration with no irritating sting of morbid regret; by building better to-day because of his poor yesterday; and by rising with renewed strength, finer purpose and freshened courage every time he falls.

If we have made an error, done a wrong, been unjust to another or to ourselves, or, like the Pharisee, passed by some opportunity for good, we should have the courage to face our mistake squarely, to call it boldly by its right name, to acknowledge it frankly and to put in no flimsy alibis of excuse to protect an anemic self-esteem.