Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.

It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right.

When no idea seems right, the right one must seem wrong.

From Rusticus...I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole.

Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places.

I never fail to be mystified by those who regard the revision of a former opinion as a sign of weakness.

It is no easy task to pick one's way from truth to truth through besetting errors.

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

In fact, I'm beginning to fear that this confusion will go on for a long time. And all because he writes down what I said incorrectly.

I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.

The gap between intention and interpretation is always rife with wrongs, especially when writer and reader occupy vastly different strata of emotional maturity and intellectual sophistication.