Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
No one can long hide behind a mask; the pretense soon lapses into the true character.
The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses.
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
. . . women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.
We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls.
There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity
The productions of a great genius, with many lapses and inadvertences, are infinitely preferable to the works of an inferior kind of author which are scrupulously exact, and conformable to all the rules of correct writing.
When a man is not deeply convicted of sin, it is a pretty sure sign that he has not truly repented. Experience has taught me that men who have very slight conviction of sin sooner or later lapse back into their old life.
Because of various security lapses, some senators are calling for a probe of the security at the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation will be conducted by the Department of Irony.
Then was ashamed of myself. I should be happy for what I'd been given. I hoped God hadn't noticed my lapse in appreciation.
arrears, n. My faithfulness was as unthinking as your lapse. Of all the things I though would go wrong, I never thought it would be that. "It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.
Part of abandoning the all-or-nothing mentality is allowing yourself room for setbacks. We are bound to have lapses on the road to health and wellness, but it is critical that we learn how to handle small failures positively so that we can minimize their long-term destructive effects. One setback is one setback—it is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of your journey toward a better you.
Change as change is mere flux and lapse; it insults intelligence. Genuinely to know is to grasp a permanent end that realizes itself through changes.
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse or omission.
I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.
... lapses of memory are only attractive when you've encouraged them, not when they take you unawares.
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.
There are times in the game when you have lapses. It just means you're not as locked in as when you first get in or at the end of the game.
What is a reporter except a kind of house detective, scavenging through the bureau drawers of men's lives, searching for the minor vice, the half-forgotten lapse that is stored away like a dirty pair of drawers.
But truths need to be repeated many times so that they don't, poor things, lapse into oblivion.
No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate--like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history--until it degenerates into fables.
I don't know what I can do about the aging. Yes, I am aging. Oh my God, I'm aging all the time. It's like those flowers that wilt in front of you in time-lapse films. But what can I possibly do? Look like a lunatic?
Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.
It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.
