Francois Fenelon Quotes

One ought to look a good deal at oneself before thinking of condemning others.

Were we to think more of our own mistakes and offences, we should be less apt to judge other people.

What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself.

I'm a highly flawed individual, as we all are, and because I was raised by Jesuits, I'm constantly, 'What is it about me and what I can do to be better?'

Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the imperfections of others.

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

I'm much more interested in looking at our own failings than going to some faraway place and looking at their failings, thus making us feel good about ourselves.

I have realised it is easy to point fingers at others, but the moment you start questioning yourself, you become a better person.

It's easy for us to look at another country or another political party and say, 'Enough! Do better!'. It is a tougher conversation when the problem is in our own tent.

I think when you're dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don't want to or aren't able to.

I resolve for 1920 to sit down all by myself and take a personal stock-taking once a month. To be no more charitable in viewing my own faults than I am an viewing the faults of others. To face the facts candidly and courageously. To address myself carefully, prayerfully, to remedying defects.

If you realize that you're the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something and grow wiser. Don't blame other people for your problems.

Every man carries two bags about him, one in front and one behind, and both are full of faults. The bag in front contains his neighbors' faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.

A lot of so-called Christian souls are not fine. People need to look inside themselves and look at the lives they're leading and fix themselves before they try to fix other people.

Whereas I formerly believed it to be my bounden duty to call other persons to order, I now admit that I need calling to order myself.

I learned that it is better, a thousandfold , for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it.

It is often our own imperfection which makes us reprove the imperfection of others; a sharp-sighted self-love of others

When I was young, every time I criticized someone, my mother would stand me in front of the mirror and say: 'The flaws you see in others are actually a reflection of yourself.' That taught me to pay close attention when I looked at others.

Nothing shows our weakness more than to be so sharp-sighted at spying other men's faults, and so purblind about our own.

We almost always see only what's wrong with other people and not what's wrong with us.

Start with the man in the mirror. Start with yourself. Don't be looking at all the other things. Start with you.

I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.

When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.

To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.