Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Error
The truth is perilous never to the true,
Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool,
And to the false, error and truth alike,
Error is worse than ignorance.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. A Mountain Sunrise.
Have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Pt. I. Sec. VI.
Mistake, error, is the discipline through which we advance.
Channing—Address on The Present Age.
Errare mehercule malo cum Platone, quem tu quanti facias, scio quam cum istis vera sentire.
By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.
Cicero—Tusculanarum Disputationum. I. 17.
The cautious seldom err.
Confucius—Analects. Bk. IV. Ch. XXIII.
Man on the dubious waves of error toss’d.
Cowper—Poem on Truth. L. 1.
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
Dryden—All for Love. Prologue.
Brother, brother; we are both in the wrong.
Gay—Beggar’s Opera. Act II. Sc. 2.
Est giebt Menschen die gar nicht irren, weil sie sich nichts Vernünftiges vorsetzen.
There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational.
Goethe—Sprüche in Prosa. III.
Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt.
While man’s desires and aspirations stir,
He can not choose but err.
Goethe—Faust. Prolog im Himmel. Der Herr. L. 77.
Ille sinistrorsum hic dexrorsum abit, unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus.
One goes to the right, the other to the left; both are wrong, but in different directions.
Horace—Satires. II. 3. 50.
Dark Error’s other hidden side is truth.
Victor Hugo—La Légende des Siècles.
Quand tout le monde a tort, tout le monde a raison.
When every one is in the wrong, every one is in the right.
La Chaussée—La Gouvernante. I. 3.
Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giving assent to that which is not true.
Locke—Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Bk. IV. Of Wrong Assent or Error. Ch. XX.
Sometimes we may learn more from a man’s errors than from his virtues.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. IV. Ch. III.
Errare humanus est.
To err is human.
Melchior de Polinac—Anti-Lucretius. V. 58. Gilbertus Cognatus—Adagia. Seneca—Bk. IV. Declam. 3. Agam, 267. Other forms of same found in Demosthenes—De Corona. V. IX. Euripides—Hippolytus. 615. Homer—Iliad. IX. 496. Lucan—Demon. 7. Marcus Antoninus. IX. 11. Menander—Fragments. 499. Plautus—Merc. II. 2. 48. Severus of Antioch—Ep. I. 20. Sophocles—Antigone. 1023. Theognis. V. 327. Humanum fuit errare. St. Augustine—Sermon 164. 14. …possum falli, ut homo. Cicero—Ad Atticum. XIII. 21. 5. Cujusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare. Cicero—Phillipics. XII. 2. 5. (Same idea in his De Invent. II. 3. 9.) Erasse humanus est. St. Jerome—Epistolæ. LVII. 12. Also in Adv. Ruf. III. 33. 36. Nemo nostrum non peccat. Homines sumus, non dei. Petronius—Satyricon. Ch. 75. Ch. 130. Decipi … humanus est. Plutarch. Stephanus’s ed. Ch. XXXI. Per humanes, inquit, errotes. Seneca—Rhetoric. Excerpta ex Controversiis. IV. III. Censen hominem me esse? erravi. Terence—Adelphi. IV. II. 40.
Les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures.
The smallest errors are always the best.
Molière—L’Etourdi. IV. 4.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
Edward J. Phelps. Speech at Mansion House, London, Jan. 24, 1889, quoting Bishop W. C. Magee of Peterborough, in 1868.
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.
Plutarch—Morals. Against Colotes the Epicurean.
Some positive persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last.
Pope—Essay on Criticism. Pt. III. L. 9.
When people once are in the wrong,
Each line they add is much too long;
Who fastest walks, but walks astray,
Is only furthest from his way.
Prior—Alma. Canto III. L. 194.
How far your eyes may pierce, I cannot tell;
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
King Lear. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 368.
Purposes mistook
Fall’n on the inventors’ heads.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 395.
The error of our eye directs our mind:
What error leads must err.
Troilus and Cressida. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 110.
Shall error in the round of time
Still father Truth?
Tennyson—Love and Duty.
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
Voltaire—A Philosophical Dictionary. Rivers.