“It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty betrayals--though, God knows, they would give cause enough for anxiety and self-contempt--but the huge elementary mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I--in complacent adjustment to alien demands.”

“There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.”

“How can one betray oneself to such a degree? What corruption greater even than power can lead us to thus deny the proof of pleasure, to hold in contempt that which we have loved? ...I could have written about chouquettes my whole life long; and my whole life long, I wrote against them.”

“What are mistakes?Is a mistake a fault in ones character causing them to do wrong because they are not knowledgeable enough for what is expected to be right? Or are mistakes opportunities to better ones self and learn what they do not know and to be able to progress into a more ethical person?”

“Most vices… demand considerable self-sacrifice. There is no greater mistake than to suppose the vicious life is the life of uninterrupted pleasure. It is a life almost as wearisome and painful—if strenuously led—as Christian’s in Pilgrims Progress.”

“Thinking of someone else is what got me damned. It’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat. (Xypher)You know sometimes it’s by repeating our mistakes that we realize what went wrong the first time. Knowing that, we’re able to fix the mistake and move past it. (Acheron)”