“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.”
“Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.”
K 39
Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook K (1789-1793)
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 137
German scientist, satirist 1742–1799Related quotes
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
“The fault is in the one who blames. Spirit sees nothing to criticize.”
As quoted in Rumi Wisdom: Daily Teachings from the Great Sufi Master (2000) by Timothy Freke
Variant: The fault is in the blamer — Spirit sees nothing to criticize.
On abandoning being a memoirist in “Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/rachel-cusk-gut-renovates-the-novel in the New Yorker (Aug 2017)
“One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound…”
Emma (1815)
Works, Emma
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 386.