“It is vain to apportion praise and blame.”
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.
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Simone de Beauvoir 152
French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, po… 1908–1986Related quotes
“…in this world, often, there is nothing to praise but no one to blame…”
“On Preparing to Read Kipling”, p. 135
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
“Thus neither the praise nor the blame is our own.”
"From a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Newton", line 21. (1782).
“I like to praise and reward loudly, to blame quietly.”
As quoted in The Historians' History of the World (1904) by Henry Smith Williams, p. 423
As quoted in The Affairs of Women: A Modern Miscellany (2006) by Colin Bingham, p. 367
Variant: I praise loudly. I blame softly.
“To govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong.”
from "Having Regulations—A Memorandum" in The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu, Volume I, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1939. Translated by W.K. Liao.
“Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.”
"First Meeting"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)
p. 68 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89009314162&view=1up&seq=72
Determinism or Free-will? (1912)
“Men are quick to praise and quick to blame; so pay no heed to what others speak of you.”
1023
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)
“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”
Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416.
Misattributed