This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If you want to praise, praise God. If you want to blame, blame yourself." - Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
"Never talk of yourself. You must either praise yourself, which is vain, or blame yourself, which is small-minded." - Baltasar Gracián
"We credit ourselves for our successes; we blame others for our faults." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"In the long run, every man will pay the penalty for his own misdeeds. The man who remembers this will be angry with no one, indignant with no one, revile no one, blame no one, offend no one, hate no one." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." - Erica Mann Jong
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." - John Burroughs
"There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has the right to blame us." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
"Persons of strong character are usually the happiest. They do not blame others for troubles that can usually be traced to their own actions and lack of understanding. They know that no one has any power to add to their happiness or detract from it unless they themselves are so weak that they allow the adverse thoughts and wicked actions of others to affect them." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Blame is safer than praise." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"‘Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on fate." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Great tranquillity of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken
"The ending of a relationship is as mysterious as its beginning... We tend to look for rational causes and to blame one of the parties for committing the crime of ending. Fate and its important relationship to the soul are forgotten... The soul in a relationship is not only contained in each individual, it is also contained in the relationship itself." - Thomas Moore
"They whose guilt within their bosom lies imagine every eye beholds their blame." - William Shakespeare
"The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice." - Doug Larson
"These are the signs of a wise man: to reprove nobody, to praise nobody, to blame nobody, nor event speak of himself or his own efforts." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"When we meet with difficulties, become anxious or troubled, let us not blame others, but rather ourselves, that is: our ideas about things." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"I never blame failures - there are too many complicated situations in life, but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
"The law does not fawn on the noble; the string does not yield to the crooked. Whatever the law applies to, the wise cannot reject nor can the brave defy. Punishment for fault never skips ministers, reward for good never misses commoners. Therefore, to correct the faults of the high, to rebuke the vices of the low, to suppress disorders, to decide against mistakes, to subdue the arrogant, to straighten the crooked, and to unify the folkways of the masses, nothing could match the law. To warn the officials and overawe the people, to rebuke obscenity and danger, and to forbid falsehood and deceit, nothing could match penalty. If penalty is severe, the noble cannot discriminate against the humble. If law is definite, the superiors are esteemed and not violated. If the superiors are not violated, the sovereign will become strong and able to maintain the proper course of government. Such was the reason why the early kings esteemed legalism and handed it down to posterity. Should the lord of men discard law and practice selfishness, high and low would have no distinction. Hence to govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong." - Han Fei, also Han Fei Zi, Han Feitzu and Han Fei Tzu
"The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says I; The leader says WE. The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says, GO; the leader says lets, GO! " - Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr.
"To err is human. To blame someone else is politics. " - Hubert Humphrey, fully Hubert Horatio Humphrey
"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible." - Hyman George Rickover
"It is not fitting that the evil produced by men should be imputed to things; let those bear the blame who make an ill use of things in themselves good." - Isocrates NULL
"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works." - John Keats
"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself." - Joseph Campbell
"We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change." - Katharine Hepburn, fully Katharine Houghton Hepburn
"The whole effort for the past one hundred years has been to remove the moral responsibility from the individual and make him blame his own human wickedness on his society, but he helps to make his society, you see, and he will not take his responsibility for his part in it." - Katherine Anne Porter, born Callie Russell Porter
"I am referring to the published statistics on the rise of juvenile crime. For one age group the crime rate has in one year risen by 56 percent. For this state of affairs people blame the lack of parental control and leniency of the Law—the established educational system of the country is hardly ever held responsible. But some of us educators feel that we ought to say, nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa, ours is the guilt, ours the greatest guilt." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
"Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds." - Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings." - Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
"The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker
"You are the Tree of Life. Your roots are everywhere. Your boughs and leaves are everywhere. Your fruits are in every mouth. Whatever be the fruits upon that tree; whatever be its boughs and leaves; whatever be the roots; they are your fruits; they are your leaves and boughs; they are your roots. If you would have the tree bear sweet and fragrant fruit, if you would have it ever strong and green, see to the sap wherewith you feed the roots. Love is the Sap of Life. While Hatred is the pus of Death. But Love, like blood, must circulate unhindered in the veins. Repress the blood, and it becomes a menace and a plague. And what is Hate but Love repressed, or Love withheld, therefore becoming such a deadly poison both to the feeder and the fed; both to the hater and to that he hates. A yellow leaf upon your tree of life is but a Love-weaned leaf, Blame not the yellow leaf. A withered bough is but a Love-starved bough. Blame not the withered bough. A putrid fruit is but a Hatred-suckled fruit. Blame not the putrid fruit. But rather blame your blind and stingy heart that would dole out the sap of life to few and would deny it to many, thereby denying it to itself. No love is possible except by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self. " - Mikhail Naimy, also spelled Mikha'il Na'ima
"We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." - Moshe Dayan
"It’s not enough, however, to blame our environmental problems on the obsession with growth. A system of deeply entrenched structures — of which growth is merely a surface manifestation — makes up our society. These structures are beyond moral control, much as the flow of adrenaline is beyond the control of a frightened creature This system has, in effect, the commanding quality of natural law." - Murray Bookchin
"Public concern for the environment cannot be addressed by placing the blame on growth without spelling out the causes of growth. Nor can an explanation be exhausted by citing “consumerism” while ignoring the sinister role played by rival producers in shaping public taste and guiding public purchasing power. Aside from the costs involved, most people quite rightly do not want to “live simply.” They do not want to diminish their freedom to travel or their access to culture, or to scale down needs that often serve to enrich human personality and sensitivity." - Murray Bookchin
"Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commits acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them." - Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license." - P. J. O'Rourke
"Dream and love are just words - until you decide to experience them… Dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people - preferably our parents, our spouses or our children - for our failure to realize our dreams… Dreams are the language of God… Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body. The pleasure of the search and of adventure feeds our dreams… Hurry up: your dreams are waiting for you, but they will not wait forever." - Paulo Coelho
"In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel… In the first place, you shouldn’t believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead. Those who make promises they don’t keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises." - Paulo Coelho
"It is impossible to see the face in the turbulent waters… At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss… At some point of our life, we will lose control of everything surrounds us and we will be controlled by the fate. That is the world's biggest lie… It is part of the human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds, or to blame someone else for our mistakes… It isn't the desire to abide by the law that makes everyone behave as society requires, but the fear of punishment. Each one of us carries a gallows inside us. " - Paulo Coelho
"My whole life, I think about love as a form of voluntary slavery. Well, a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. He brings him or her integrity, perfect, people feel the most freedom lovers with all my heart. And love with all my heart feels free. That's because why, despite what I might experience, do or learn, nothing meaningful at all. I hope this time will pass quickly, so I can start the search for himself - a man who will understand me and did not hurt me. But I'm saying? In love, no one can harm anyone; we must take responsibility for their own feelings and not blame others for what we feel. Being hurt when I gradually beat lost the man I loved. But now, I believe that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. It's true experience of freedom: to be the most important things in this world without owning it. " - Paulo Coelho
"No one should let themselves get used to anything… No one wants their life thrown into chaos at all. That's why many people holding back the threat level under control, and that's the way they are able to prop up a house or structure has rotted. They are the architects of innovation. Others think the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought; they hope to find in the passion that the method solves all their problems. They force people to take responsibility for their happiness, and blame those people because they were not happy. They are in an excited state because of the magic has happened or depressed because things just do not expect the destruction of all. Alkali keep the passion, or surrender it blindly-way, less destructive The most extreme? I do not know. " - Paulo Coelho
"We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn't work that way at all… We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take… We are not the person other people wish we were. We are who we decide to be. It's always easy to blame others. You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility… We are responsible for the entire world, because we did not know where there are fellow souls, we have these at the beginning of the universe, and if their lives were fine, we will be happy… We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity… We can only understand the miracle of life fully when to let the unexpected to happen." - Paulo Coelho
"We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop… We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use in the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new. " - Paulo Coelho
"Only children believe they're capable of everything… Opportunities multiply as they are seized… Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything… Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day… Nothing in this world happens by chance… Nothing will behave in the logical way you have come to expect." -
"Up until then, travel and the idea of going far away had just been a dream, and dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people--preferably our parents, our spouses or our children--for our failure to realize our dreams… Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives… We become imprisoned by our memories, and that makes our lives wretched… We can assume many mistakes in my life, except one: the one that will destroy us. " -
"Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
"Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame -- or one that is conducive to loving-kindness." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown