Jean de La Fontaine Quotes

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them fully developed in someone else.

I want to be able, as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye.

I try to be a good person. I know what my downfalls are, so that's a good thing.

The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.

I discovered that the world frightens you with your shortcomings, but if you do not worry about it, you are liberated.

All honor's wounds are self-inflicted.

Exposing characters and their shortcomings gives me great comfort. It's always great to write about someone more mixed up than yourself.

Nobody can be perfect unless he admits his faults, but if he has faults how can he be perfect?

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

The thing is, at the end of the day you still have to face yourself.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

I think to an extent every human being needs to be redeemed somewhat or at least needs to look at themselves and say, 'I've made mistakes, I'm off course, I need to change.' Which is probably the hardest thing for a human being to do, and maybe that's why it interests me so.

I know that in my public life I fell below the standards that I had set myself... I have seen what is wrong but not done enough to put it right. I have been more critical than correct.

If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.

If you fail on your own terms, that's a pretty good way to go down.

It's easy for us to look at another country or another political party and say, 'Enough! Do better!'. It is a tougher conversation when the problem is in our own tent.

IF - and this is the greatest of them all - I had the courage to see myself as I reallyam, I would find out what is wrong with me, and correct it, then I might have a chance to profit by my mistakes and learn something from the experience of others,for I know that there is something WRONG with me, or I would now be where I WOULD HAVE BEEN IF I had spent more time analyzing my weaknesses, and less time building alibis to cover them.

If a man coaches himself, then he has only himself to blame when he is beaten.

A part of control is learning to correct your own weaknesses. The person doesn't live who was born with everything. Sometimes he has one weak point, generally he has several. The first thing is to know your faults. And then take on a systematic plan of correcting them. You know the old saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link. The same can be said in the chain of skills a man forges.

Every man carries two bags about him, one in front and one behind, and both are full of faults. The bag in front contains his neighbors' faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.

Be your own worst critic. When things go wrong it's tempting to shift the blame. Don't. Accept responsibility. People will appreciate it, and you will find out what you're capable of.

It is with pleasure I receive reproof, when reproof is due, because no person can be readier to accuse me, than I am to acknowledge an error, when I am guilty of one; nor more desirous of atoning for a crime, when I am sensible of having committed it.

Even if I screw up in my personal life, as long as I'm not destroying myself, I just think, "Okay, I screwed up." I'm not Mother Theresa.

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.