Quotes & Sayings About Fault Finding

Dillon, all you have in this world, really, are your responses to it. Responses to your feelings and responses to what comes in from outside. You know how adults are always trying to get you to take responsibility? That's all responsibility is, responding to the world, owning your responses. It isn't about taking blame or finding out if something's your fault. — Chris Crutcher

Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection. Attend to yourself, set yourself right; mentally and emotionally. The physical self will follow automatically. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

And do you not also think, as I do, that the harsh feeling which the many entertain
towards philosophy originates in the pretenders, who rush in uninvited,
and are always abusing them, and finding fault with them, who make persons
instead of things the theme of their conversation? and nothing can be more
unbecoming in philosophers than this. — Plato

Let us resolve: First, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault finding that does no good a sin; third, to practice the grade and virtue of praise. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Did I, my lines intend for public view,
How many censures, would their faults pursue,
Some would, because such words they do affect,
Cry they're insipid, empty, uncorrect.
And many, have attained, dull and untaught,
The name of wit, only by finding fault.
True judges, might condemn their want of wit,
And all might say, they're by a woman writ. — Anne Finch

Finding fault in others, just for the sake of finding fault, we will pollute our own minds. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Assuming that everything is your fault is a shortcut for finding those areas where you have control, and opening the door to exerting that control for positive change. — Tynan

One must learn to forgive and not to hold a hostile, bitter attitude of mind, which offends those about us and prevents us from enjoying ourselves. One must recognize human shortcomings and adjust himself to them rather than to be constantly finding fault with them. — Napoleon Bonaparte

We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person's pride. Whereas a few minutes' thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person's attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting! — Dale Carnegie

This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour. (Autobiography, 1771) — Benjamin Franklin

The Prophet said in a sermon: Blessed is he whose concern for his own faults keeps him away of finding fault of others, who spends out of his lawful earnings, keeps company with theologians and the wise, and spurns the sinners and the wicked people. Blessed is he who humbles himself, makes his conduct refined, heart good and does not do harm to the people. Blessed is he who acts up to his knowledge, spends his surplus wealth, abstains from superfluous talks, follows sunnah and does not introduce innovations. — Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

When our conscience bothers us, whether we admit it or not, we often try to justify it by correcting others, or by finding fault with them. The readiness to believe evil about others is in large part ammunition for a thousand scandals in our own hearts. — Fulton J. Sheen

Humans have yet to dwell upon the consequences of their
actions. People have yet to admit the bad that they do to
nature, for example. Actually, most people spend their time
finding fault in the action of others, rather than their own. — Masaaki Hatsumi

Love, oneness, is no separation between you and life. It is a progressive letting go, a progressive not fault finding. Just do nothing and love this moment. Its very beautiful and very deep. — Ajahn Brahm

It was the critic Alexander who put me on my guard against unnecessary fault-finding. People should not be sharply corrected for bad grammar, provincialisms, or mispronunciation; it is better to suggest the proper expression by tactfully introducing it oneself in, say, one's reply to a question or one's acquiescence in their sentiments, or into a friendly discussion of the topic itself (not of the diction), or by some other suitable form of reminder. — Anonymous

He has great tranquillity of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. He will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience is pure. You are not holier if you are praised, nor the more worthless if you are found fault with. What you are, that you are; neither by word can you be made greater than what you are in the sight of God. — Thomas A Kempis

I think in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion, dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice-they all make fine fuel. — Edna Ferber

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. — John F. Kennedy

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. — Mark Twain

I criticise by creation, not by finding fault. — Michelangelo

The most censorious are generally the least judicious; who, having nothing to recommend themselves, will be finding fault with others. No man envies the merit of another, that has any of his own. — Ellin Devis

Why do you enjoy finding fault with others? Is there not a better way to feel good? Such — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I am acquainted with a wife and mother who is chained securely at the present time to a life-style of murmuring and criticism. She is the first to point out faults in her husband or to repeat neighborhood gossip. How damaging is a habit that permits fault-finding, character assassination, and the sharing of malicious rumors! Gossip and caustic comments often create chains of contention. These chains may appear to be very small, but what misery and woe they can cause! — Marvin J. Ashton

refrain from fault-finding, and not in a reproachful way to chide those who uttered any barbarous or solecistic or strange-sounding expression; but dexterously to introduce the very expression which ought to have been used, and in the way of answer or giving confirmation, or joining in an inquiry about the thing itself, not about the word, or by some other fit suggestion. — Various

We live in a world where finding fault in others seems to be the favorite blood sport. It has long been the basis of political campaign strategy. It is the theme of much television programming across the world. It sells newspapers. Whenever we meet anyone, our first, almost unconscious reaction may be to look for imperfections. — Henry B. Eyring

A fault is something very easy to find in others, but becomes invisible when you try to find it in yourself — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Lent is a time for discipline, for confession, for honesty, not because God is mean or fault- finding or finger-pointing but because he wants us to know the joy of being cleaned out, ready for all the good things he now has in store. — N. T. Wright

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself
thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done. — Henrik Ibsen

The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health. — Henry Ward Beecher

In this world, it is not worth finding anyone's faults. One becomes bound (by karma) by finding faults. — Dada Bhagwan

I, therefore, O Caesar, do not publish this work, merely prefixing my name to a treatise which of right belongs to others, nor think of acquiring reputation by finding fault with the works of any one. — Vitruvius

Still when it comes to finding fault we are fonder of windows than of mirrors. — David Wolpe

There is no such thing as constructive criticism. There is constructive advice, constructive guidance, constructive counsel, encouragement, suggestion, and instruction. Criticism, however, is not constructive but a destructive means of faultfinding that cripples all parties involved. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Well I don't know that I'm okay any more than anyone else is okay, I lead a happy life and a very full one - I have a happy marriage and my kids are all cheerful, and no one is finding fault with me, personally. — L. Ron Hubbard

If you look for fault, I promise you, you will always find it. — M.J. Prest

God is not concerned about our plans; He doesn't ask, "Do you want to go through this loss of a loved one, this difficulty, or this defeat?" No, He allows these things for His own purpose. The things we are going through are either making us sweeter, better, and nobler men and women, or they are making us more critical and fault-finding, and more insistent on our own way. The things that happen either make us evil, or they make us more saintly, depending entirely on our relationship with God and its level of intimacy. — Oswald Chambers

This manic asidedness - well, that's New York and the Jews. Heady stuff. The only thing I don't like is that they all seem a bit too quick to find fault with Gentiles in their attitudes toward Jews. You have a touch of it too - finding things horrendously anti-Semitic, or even mildly so, when they really aren't. I know it's not entirely unjustified for Jews to be thin-skinned on that score - nonetheless, it's irritating. Uh-oh, she — Philip Roth

He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men. — Honore De Balzac

I dislike nothing more than finding fault with a man's nature or talent; it only depresses and worries and does no good; one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, all striving and struggling are useless there, so one has to be silent about it, and let the responsibility rest with God. — Felix Mendelssohn

He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity
suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction. — Alain De Botton

One of the most notorious slogans of ultra-nationalism in Turkey has been 'Either love it or leave it!' It is meant to block all kinds of fault-finding from within. The implication is that if you criticize your country or your state, you are showing disrespect, not to mention a lack of patriotism, in which case you had better take your leave. If you do stay, however, the implication is that you love your homeland, in which case you had better not voice any critical opinions. This black-and-white mentality is an obstacle to social progress. But it is not only Turkish ultra- nationalism that is fuelled by a dualistic mentality. All kinds of extremist, exclusivist discourses are similarly reductionist and sheathed in tautology. Either/or approaches ask us to make a choice, all the while spreading the fallacy that it is not possible to have multiple belongings, multiple roots, multiple loves. — Elif Shafak

Often self-love is replaced with self- loathing, compounded by beating ourselves up. We become experts at putting ourselves down, judging ourselves, and finding fault. This creates deep shame that says "I am a mistake" instead of saying "I made a mistake. — David W. Earle

We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours. — Adam Clarke

You should try smiling, yourself,' he had said with a sudden flash of spirit. 'Do you never tire of being displeased, Darcy? Upon my soul, I believe you take pleasure in finding fault and looking at the world with disdain. — Mary Street

Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. — Og Mandino

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl very gravely got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic. — James Thomas Fields

A good coach is postive. Your job when coaching is not correcting mistakes, finding fault, and assessing blame. Instead, your function is achieving goals by coaching your staff to peak performance. Focusing on the positive means that you start with what's good and what works, and spend your attention and energy there. — Marshall Cook

What this country needs is more people to inspire others with confidence, and fewer people to discourage any initiative in the right direction more to get into the thick of things, fewer to sit on the sidelines, merely finding fault more to point out what's right with the world, and fewer to keep harping on what's wrong with it and more who are interested in lighting candles, and fewer who blow them out. — James Keller

It is better to know oneself than know to others. So not find fault others see first in yourself. When one experiences truth, the madness of finding fault with others disappears. — Suman Jyoty Bhante

To a great extent the world is what we make it. We get back what we give. If we sow hate, we reap hate; if we scatter love and gentleness we harvest love and happiness. Other people are like a mirror which reflects back on us the kind of image we cast. The kind person bears with the infirmities of others, never magnifies trifles, and avoids a spirit of fault finding. — Archbishop Fulton Sheen

I have stopped finding fault with creation and have learned to accept it. We have some power in us that knows its own ends. It is that which drives us on to what we must finally become ... This is the true meaning of transformation. This is the real metamorphosis. — David Malouf

I spent years crying in my diary.
But I finally stopped finding
fault with myself. We're
all different, yet the same. — Jasmine Guy

Perfect servants would be the worst of all for certain masters, whose happiness consists in finding fault with them. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Try finding love, rather than finding fault. — Gerald Jampolsky

The following story is one which he related recently regarding the practice of fault - finding among creeds: A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time ... — Swami Vivekananda

It pure joy, my brothers and sisters,a whenever you face trials of many kinds,f 3because you know that the testing of your faithg produces perseverance.h 4Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be maturei and complete, not lacking anything. 5If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God,j who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.k 6But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt,l because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8Such a person is double-mindedm and unstablen in all they do. — Anonymous

A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding. — Lao-Tzu

Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst. — Bernard Beckett

Sometimes discipline, which means 'to teach,' is confused with criticism. Children-as well as people of all ages-improve behavior from love and encouragement more than from fault-finding. — Susan W. Tanner

My days of whining and complaining about others have come to an end. Nothing is easier than fault finding. All it will do is discolor my personality so that none will want to associate with me. That was my old life. No more. — Og Mandino

Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine. — Herbert Spencer

I will not look at another's bowl intent on finding fault: a training to be observed. — Gautama Buddha

If you are a true Christian, you will not give way at home to bad temper, impatience, fault-finding, sarcasm, unkindness, suspicion, selfishness, or laziness. — Billy Graham

Oh, yes, there are ways in which men can be destroyed short of murder. We can destroy a man's reputation, we can shake somebody else's confidence in him by whispering criticism or by deliberate fault finding. That is the kind of thing which our Lord is here indicating, and His whole purpose is to show that all that is included in this commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill.' Killing does not only mean destroying life physically, it means still more trying to destroy the spirit and the soul, destroying the person in any shape or form. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

No sinful word, nor deed of wrong, Nor thoughts that idly rove; But simple truth be on our tongue, And in our hearts be love. ST. AMBROSE. Let us all resolve,--First, to attain the grace of SILENCE; Second, to deem all FAULT-FINDING that does no good a SIN, and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling on them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life; Third, to practise the grace and virtue of PRAISE. HARRIET B. STOWE. — Mary W. Tileston

Hurt people hurt people. That's how pain patterns gets passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future. — Yehuda Berg

There's something delicious about finding fault with something. And that can be including finding fault with one's self, you know? — Pema Chodron

This bad habit of fault-finding, criticizing and complaining is a tool that grows keener by constant use, and there is grave danger that he who at first is only a moderate kicker may develop into a chronic knocker, and the knife he has sharpened will sever his head. Hooker — Elbert Hubbard

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. — Og Mandino

There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it. — Jack Black

Sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty; secondly, either that of admiration or fault-finding - the latter a very animated enjoyment. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Nothing is easier than fault finding. — Og Mandino

Fear is finding fault with the future. — Ajahn Brahm

Balance in life is the key, as Aristotle taught us. Nobody likes a naive Pollyanna, but neither do we like to be around people who are constantly complaining and finding fault. — Mark Skousen

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

A bad composition carries its own punishment - contempt and ridicule; a good one excites envy and entails upon its author a thousand mortifications; he finds himself assailed by partial and ill-humored criticism; one man finds fault with the plan, another with the style, a third with the precept which strives to inculcate; and they who cannot succeed in finding fault with the book, employ themselves in stigmatizing its author: they maliciously rake out from obscurity every little circumstance which may throw ridicule upon his private character or conduct and aim at wounding the man since they cannot hurt the writer. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

Happy are those who find fault with themselves instead of finding fault with others. — Muhammad

Frequently the enemy entices Christians to harbor an unforgiving spirit - a very common symptom indeed among God's children. Such bitterness and fault-finding and enmity inflict a severe blow upon spiritual life. — Watchman Nee

I had now been a servant for three years, and could act the part well enough by that time. But Nancy was very changeable, two-faced you might call her, and it wasn't easy to tell what she wanted from one hour to the next. One minute she would be up on her high horse and ordering me about and finding fault, and the next minute she would be my best friend, or pretend to be, and would put her arm through mine, and say I looked tired, and should sit down with her, and have a cup of tea. It is much harder to work for such a person, as just when you are curtsying and Ma'am-ing them, they turn around and upbraid you for being so stiff and formal, and want to confide in you, and expect the same in return. You cannot ever do the correct thing with them. — Margaret Atwood

I am not given to finding fault, for there are innumerable fools. — Plato

Give no time to finding fault of criticism. — Marvin J. Ashton

There, don't you think I'm always a-fault-finding! When I get hold of the real thing in folks, I stick to 'em, - but there's an awful sight of poor material walking about that ain't worth the ground it steps on. — Sarah Orne Jewett

- Is it their fault if they think that it's good to work?
- No, said Colin, it's not their fault. It's because they've been told : work is sacred, it's good, it's nice, it's what counts before anything, and only those who work have the right to everything. The only thing is, it's been set up so that they work all the time so they can't take advantage of it.
- But then they're stupid, said Chloe.
- Yes, they're stupid, said Colin. That's why they agree with those that made them believe that work is the best thing there is. That saves them from thinking and finding a way to progress and to no longer work. — Boris Vian

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

When men are employ'd, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, the bread, etc. — Benjamin Franklin

In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs - perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present. — George Eliot

I'm a Christian now. The things that drove me crazy growing up was how everyone works at fault-finding with different religions. The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snow boarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away, — Paul Walker

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man. — Marcus Aurelius

The lower sort of men must be indulged the consolation of finding fault with those above them; without that, they would be so melancholy that it would be dangerous, considering their numbers. — George Savile, 1st Marquess Of Halifax

Best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault- finding brothers and sisters at home who will not spare him, but willpick and cavil, and tell the odious truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson