Mistakes
Quotes - Let us cry for the spilt milk
“Learn
from your history, but don’t live in it.”
―
Steve Maraboli
“The
man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often
wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is
full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled
with cheerfulness and with the comfort of old age.”
―
Plato, The Republic and Other Works
“Show
me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who has
never achieved much.”
―
Joan Collins
“When
the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us.”
―
Alice Walker
“Let
us cry for the spilt milk, by all means, if by doing so we learn how to avoid
spilling any more. Let us cry for the spilt milk, and remember how, and where,
and why, we spilt it. Much wisdom is learnt through tears, but none by
forgetting our lessons.”
―
Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton, The Squatter and the Don
“I
hope I remember everything," said Toni.
"You
won't," said Trapp. "That's how you learn. But after you make the
same mistake one, or two, or five times, you'll eventually get it. And then
you'll make new mistakes.”
―
Louis Sachar, The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker
“I
want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing
away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. To bad I drew my mistakes in
ink.”
―
Emery Lord, Open Road Summer
“I
have learned from my mistakes, and I am sure I can repeat them exactly”
―
Peter Cook
“Your
mistakes only define the rest of your life if you let them. Don’t let them.”
―
Sabaa Tahir, A Sky Beyond the Storm
“Do
you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.”
―
Len Deighton
“Men
are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do
benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of
genuine contrition.”
―
Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour
“Millions
of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol.
The same can be said about millions of births.”
―
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“Sometimes
… I think parents work so hard to keep us from making their mistakes, they
won’t allow us to make our own.”
―
Charles Sheehan-Miles, A Song for Julia
“It
is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor
ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at
the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will
run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the
third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after
the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult
it is for the fourth one to learn how to run!
When
we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is
impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best. That is, I think,
the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you
sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of
the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think
the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you
will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice
Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the
worst one. When you consider the mercy of Buddha, how do you think Buddha will
feel about the four kinds of horses? He will have more sympathy for the worst
one than for the best one.
When
you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will
find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you
will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. Those who can sit
perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the
actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen. But those who find great difficulties
in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So I think that sometimes the
best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one.
If
you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually
become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often
encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is
also true in art and in Zen. It is true in life. So when we talk about Zen we
cannot say, 'He is good,' or 'He is bad,' in the ordinary sense of the words.
The posture taken in zazen is not the same for each of us. For some it may be
impossible to take the cross-legged posture. But even though you cannot take
the right posture, when you arouse your real, way-seeking mind, you can
practice Zen in its true sense. Actually it is easier for those who have
difficulties in sitting to arouse the true way-seeking mind that for those who
can sit easily.”
―
Shunryu Suzuki
