A Quote by Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

There is no more reason to accuse ourselves excessively of our failings than to excuse them overmuch. He who goes overboard in self-criticism often does so in order not to suffer others' criticisms, or else does so out of a kind of vanity that wishes to make others believe that he knows how to confess his faults.

Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

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Accuse Believe Confess Criticism Does Else Excuse Faults Goes His How Kind Knows Make More Often Order Others Our Ourselves Out Overboard Reason Self Suffer Than Them Vanity Wishes

Quote Author

Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable
1599 - January 16, 1678

Before making peace, war is necessary, and that war must be made with our self. Our worst enemy is our self: our faults, our weaknesses, our limitations. And our mind is such a traitor! What does it? It covers our faults even from our own eyes, and points out to us the reason for all our difficulties: others! So it constantly deludes us, keeping us unaware of the real enemy, and pushes us towards those others to fight them, showing them to us as our enemies.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

Samuel Johnson

If we don't love ourselves, we would not love others. When someone tell you to love others first, and to love others more than ourselves; it is impossible. If you can't love yourselves, you can't love anybody else. Therefore we must gather up our great power so that we know in what ways we are good, what special abilities we have, what wisdom, what kind of talent we have, and how big our love is. When we can recognize our virtues, we can learn how to love others.

Ching Hai

One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Going out to others in order to reach the fringes of humanity does not mean rushing out aimlessly into the world. Often it is better simply to slow down, to put aside our eagerness in order to see and listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way.

Pope Francis

Sometimes we esteem others more important than ourselves. We always become the martyr. It is wonderful to be self-sacrificing, but watch out for self-disdain! If we don’t apply some of the medicine that we use on others to strengthen ourselves, our patients will be healed and we will be dying.

T. D. Jakes

No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful.

Henry Ward Beecher

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. [We must learn to control and focus the force of our imagination on the good, bright side so it is positive and constructive helping ourselves and others, rather than let its force focus on the bad, dark side so it is negative and destructive hurting ourselves and others!]

Seneca the Younger

Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.

Erving Goffman

The loftiness of understanding embraces all. It requires as much spirit to suffer the failings of others as it does to appreciate their good qualities.

Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

We would willingly have others perfect, and yet we amend not our own faults. We would have others severely corrected and will not be corrected ourselves. The large liberty of others displeases us, and yet we will not have our own desires denied us. We will have others kept under by strict laws, but in no sort will ourselves be restrained. And thus it appears how seldom we weigh our neighbor in the same balance with ourselves.

Thomas a Kempis

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

Francois Fenelon

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.