"It is the prerogative of great men..." - Quote by Francois De La Rochefoucauld
It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.
More by Francois De La Rochefoucauld
“Confidence in conversation has a greater share than wit.”
“Tastes in young people are changed by natural impetuosity, and in the aged are preserved by habit.”
“What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.”
More on Greatness
“You know that he who would be the greatest among you must become the servant of all.”
“The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men.”
“The first time I ever saw Arnold Palmer, I said, There's a star. The first time I saw Jack Nicklaus, I said, Superstar. I feel the same way about Tiger Woods.”
More on Defects
“"I fear your kind and open communication, which has rendered me more painfully conscious of my own defects, has not improved me," sighed Kate.”
“We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.”
“The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.”