I know that the pope's infallible, but that doesn't mean he can't make mistakes.
Human nature is weak.
One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the conscience may be erroneous.
I shall ask for the abolition for the punishment of death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me.
To err from the right path is common to mankind.
Errors of knowledge are not breaches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience.
I'm no saint.
What to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.
I didn't grow up in the Catholic church, but I went to a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, and the Jesuit priests are not saints floating around campus.
It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.
Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy.
He who thinks he lives without sin puts aside not sin, but pardon.
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Who shall dare to talk of strength when David can fall?
Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.
As to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else-fallen angels-we have indeed fallen far.
None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses.
According to this way of arguing, there will be no true principles in the world; for there are none but what may be wrested and perverted to serve bad purposes, either through the weakness or wickedness of men.
My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint.
Could she fall so low? No, there were limits, and she believed she still knew where some of them were.
O ye powers that search The heart of man, and weigh his inmost thoughts, If I have done amiss, impute it not! The best may err, but you are good.
