There are no souls in the world that are so fearful to judge others as those that do most judge themselves, nor so careful to make a righteous judgment of men or things as those that are most careful to judge themselves.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how self-doubt often leads to harsh judgments of others, while self-reflection fosters a more compassionate perspective.
In this quote, Thomas Brooks emphasizes the paradox that those who are most critical of themselves tend to be the harshest judges of others. It suggests that a deep understanding of one's own flaws and vulnerabilities can lead to a greater sense of empathy and fairness towards others, as they become more aware of the complexities of human nature.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the nature of judgment during a philosophy class.
Remember this-all the sighing, mourning, sobbing, and complaining in the world, does not so undeniably evidence a man to be humble, as his overlooking his own righteousness, and living really and purely upon the righteousness of Christ.
Grace and glory differ very little; the one is the seed, the other is the flower; grace is glory militant, glory is grace triumphant.
He is the best preacher, not that tickles the ear, but that breaks the heart.
Ah! sinner, remember this, there is no way on earth effectually to be rid of the guilt, filth, and power of sin, but by believing in a Saviour. It is not resolving, it is not complaining, it is not mourning, but believing, that will make thee divinely victorious over that body of sin that to this day is too strong for thee, and that will certainly be thy ruin, if it be not ruined by a hand of faith.
Self is the only oil that makes the chariot-wheels of the hypocrite move in all religious concerns.
Humility can weep over other men's weaknesses, and joy and rejoice over their graces.
I could not help feeling that they were evil things-- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That seething , half-luminous cloud-background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial; and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world.
Both God's love and God's wrath are ratcheted up in the move from the old covenant to the new, from the Old Testament to the New. These themes barrel along through redemptive history, unresolved, until they come to a resounding climax - in the cross.
Every rose that is sweet-scented within, That rose is telling of the secrets of the Universal.
Happy is the man who knows or even the man who remembers those silent vigils where silence itself was the sign of the communion of souls!
Pots can show malice, the patterns of linoleum can leer up at you, treachery is the other side of dailiness.
It is with rivers as it is with people: the greatest are not always the most agreeable nor the best to live with.
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