The greatest faculties of the soul are developed only by suffering, and this purification of ourselves restores us after a time, to happiness; for the circle closes up again, and carries us back to those days of innocence which preceded our faults.
Madame De Stael-Holstein Reflections on Suicide
"A sorrow your soul has changed into sweetness, to indulgence or patient smiles, is a sorrow that shall never return without spiritual ornament; and a fault or defect you have looked in the face can harm you no more, or even be harmful to others."
Maeterlinck, Maurice, WISDOM and DESTINY
"A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one would find fault with what he has done."
Newman, Cardinal
It is not men's faults that ruin them so much as the manner in which they conduct themselves after the faults have been committed.
Samuel Smiles, CHARACTERWe can love with all our heart those in whom we recognize great faults. It would be presumptuous to suppose that perfection alone can please us. Our failings bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself.
Vauvenargues 176
"How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them."
Franklin, Benjamin, POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC
Our faults are always pardonable, when we have so much power over ourselves as to confess them.
La Rochefoucauld
The greatest of faults...is to be conscious of none.
Carlyle
One of my favorite quotations is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the transcendentalist philosophers of the 19th century. It's not exactly about flaws, more about ordinariness, and finding what makes people, who might otherwise seem ordinary, really be special. I like to think that part of the success of OpEdNEws.com is because I believe that this quotation not only applies to successful individuals, but also to successful leaders and editors-- that being a leader is to a great extent about trusting that the people you work with have, inside, buried beneath their layers and personas of grey ordinariness and colorless workaday lives, special capacities, gifts and strengths, which trust, respect encouragement and patience can empower to unfold and manifest.
"A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special Talent, and the mastery of Successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I'm at my best, finding my best "angle" I handle people who are their worst, their dullest, their ugliest angles, with firmness, strength, patience and tolerance, combined as needed. On my lesser days... watch out.
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