The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
~Jules Renard

Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.
~Don Wilder and Bill Rechin

Don't make excuses - make good.
~Elbert Hubbard

He who excuses himself accuses himself.
~Gabriel Meurier, Trésor des sentences

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.
~Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.
~Ani Difranco

How strange to use "You only live once" as an excuse to throw it away.
~Bill Copeland

Don't do what you'll have to find an excuse for.
~Proverb

No one ever excused his way to success.
~Dave Del Dotto

Excuses are the tools with which persons with no purpose in view build for themselves great monuments of nothing.
~Steven Grayhm

And oftentimes excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

~William Shakespeare

Bad excuses are worse than none.
~Thomas Fuller

A lie is an excuse guarded.
~Jonathan Swift

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
~Henry Ward Beecher

If you don't want to do something, one excuse is as good as another.
~Yiddish Proverb

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
~Marcus Fabius Quintilian

Whoever wants to be a judge of human nature should study people's excuses.
~Hebbel

There is no such thing as a list of reasons. There is either one sufficient reason or a list of excuses.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.
~François de la Rochefoucauld

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
~Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
~Edward R. Murrow

Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.
~Bill Clinton

We weave our excuses around events.
Thin, poor quality cloth of justification
Poor substitutes for the heavy tribal blankets
Once we wove to wrap our children.

~Phillip Pulfrey, "Cloth," Beyond Me, www.originals.net

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
~Ambrose Bierce

Every vice has its excuse ready.
~Publilius Syrus

We are all manufacturers - some make good, others make trouble, and still others make excuses.
~Author Unknown

One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.
~Robert Townsend

Success is a tale of obstacles overcome, and for every obstacle overcome, an excuse not used.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy, as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon - the pardon is granted, but the joint aches, especially if there is a corn upon it.
~Lord Byron

Bad men excuse their faults; good men abandon them.
~Author Unknown

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
~Benjamin Franklin

It is wise to direct your anger towards problems - not people, to focus your energies on answers - not excuses.
~William Arthur Ward

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
~Aesop

We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
~Rudyard Kipling

The person who really wants to do something finds a way; the other person finds an excuse.
~Author Unknown

If you always make excuses to not follow through you deserve the weight of anxiety on your chest.
~Daniel, @blindedpoet

Justifying a fault doubles it.
~French Proverb

The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
~Bob Moawad

The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
~Benjamin Franklin

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
~Russell Baker

Sometimes I wish I had a terrible childhood, so that at least I'd have an excuse.
~Jimmy Fallon

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
~Kimberly Johnson