We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions.
Interpretation
We often hold others accountable for what they do, while we excuse our own actions based on our intentions.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the double standard we employ in judgment. We tend to evaluate others strictly by their actions and outcomes, while we are often forgiving of ourselves, attributing our own behaviors to our intentions rather than the results. This discrepancy points to a deep-seated bias in human nature and calls us to reflect on our own judgments and how we apply them to ourselves and others.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics, one might quote this to illustrate the difficulties in judging character.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have.
Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real horror vacuum.
I don't like the subtle infiltration of 'something for nothing' philosophies into the very hearthstone of the American family. I believe that 'Thou shalt earn the bread by the sweat of thy face' was a benediction and not a penalty. Work is the zest of life; there is joy in its pursuit.
The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.
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