Mistakes Quotes

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
― Anaïs Nin

“It has been a long trip," said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; "but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I'm afraid it's all my fault."
"You must never feel badly about making mistakes," explained Reason quietly, "as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Scars are but evidence of life," Coquette said. "Evidence of choices to be learned from...evidence of wounds...wounds inflicted of mistakes...wounds we choose to allow the healing of. We likewise choose to see them, that we may not make the same mistakes again.”
― Marcia Lynn McClure, The Whispered Kiss

“That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren't hiding anything.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.”
― Andy Rooney

“We look down our noses at people who've made mistakes in relationships. She's so stupid! How could she do that! Our superiority makes us feel better. But I’d bet everything I have on the fact that people to claim to have a perfect record in love are either lying or have very limited dating experience. People who say, I’d never do that! Someday, unless you are very, very lucky, you’ll have a story to tell. Or not to tell.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Thinking there is something better out there in the world, something worth more than you already have- of all my mistakes,that was my biggest.”
― Louise Candlish, Before We Say Goodbye

“Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“Once she had loved Prince Joffrey with all her heart, and admired and trusted her his mother, the queen. They had repaid that love and trust with her father's head. Sansa would never make that mistake again.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“We are all flawed, my dear. Every one of us. And believe me, we've all made mistakes. You've just got to take a good hard look at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move on, pet.”
― Lauren Myracle

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”
― Plutarch

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.”
― Werner Heisenberg

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.”
― Al Franken

“You see, the best thing about wrong decisions is that they don’t prevent you from making the right decisions later on. It’s harder, but it’s not impossible.”
― Siobhan Vivian, Not That Kind of Girl

“Confidence turns into pride only when you are in denial of your mistakes.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown.”
― Hugh Prather

“We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

“Each one of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy

“Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience.”
― Denis Waitley

“You can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it's not a mistake, it's a choice.”
― Steven Denn

“The Mistake


With the mistake your life goes in reverse.
Now you can see exactly what you did
Wrong yesterday and wrong the day before
And each mistake leads back to something worse

And every nuance of your hypocrisy
Towards yourself, and every excuse
Stands solidly on the perspective lines
And there is perfect visibility.

What an enlightenment. The colonnade
Rolls past on either side. You needn't move.
The statues of your errors brush your sleeve.
You watch the tale turn back — and you're dismayed.

And this dismay at this, this big mistake
Is made worse by the sight of all those who
Knew all along where these mistakes would lead —
Those frozen friends who watched the crisis break.

Why didn't they say? Oh, but they did indeed —
Said with a murmur when the time was wrong
Or by a mild refusal to assent
Or told you plainly but you would not heed.

Yes, you can hear them now. It hurts. It's worse
Than any sneer from any enemy.
Take this dismay. Lay claim to this mistake.
Look straight along the lines of this reverse.”
― James Fenton, Out of Danger

“Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”
― Elbert Hubbard, The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard

“The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.”
― Malcolm Forbes

“Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped”
― Alan Sheinwald, Alan Sheinwald is Building a Perfect Home

“Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.”
― James M Cain

“A culture that has a moral compass which always points toward the elite’s conception of good—or a society’s default conceptions of “good”—has a broken moral compass. Compasses have value because they point toward a single magnetic North, not a moving position.”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion: A playbook for sculpting cultures that overcome demographic collapse & facilitate long-term human flourishing

“The person you hurt the most in this world was the person that brought you into it.”
― Vannary Rang

“There’s Ambien-in-alcohol weird and then there’s Ambien-mistaken-for-cocaine weird.”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia