“Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own.”
"From a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Newton", line 21. (1782).
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William Cowper174
(1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist 1731–1800Related quotes
“So, march away; and let due praise be given
Neither to fate nor fortune, but to Heaven.”
Christopher Marlowe The Jew of Malta
Ferneze, Act V
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)
“He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.”
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer
Magnam habet cordis tranquillitatem, qui nec laudes curat, nec vituperia. — Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (ca. 1418), book II, ch. VI, paragraph 2.
Misattributed
“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer
Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416.
Misattributed
“It is vain to apportion praise and blame.”
Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex
The Second Sex (1949)
Context: It is vain to apportion praise and blame. The truth is that if the vicious circle is so hard to break, it is because the two sexes are each the victim at once of the other and of itself. Between two adversaries confronting each other in their pure liberty, an agreement could be easily reached: the more so as the war profits neither. But the complexity of the whole affair derives from the fact that each camp is giving aid and comfort to the enemy; woman is pursuing a dream of submission, man a dream of identification. Want of authenticity does not pay: each blames the other for the unhappiness he or she has incurred in yielding to the temptations of the easy way; what man and woman loathe in each other is the shattering frustration of each one's own bad faith and baseness.
Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist
24
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences
III, lines 75-78, John Dryden, trans.
Satires, Satire III