C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Reproach (See Reproof)
True invective requires great imagination.
Reproach is infinite, and knows no end.
Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
Reproach is usually honest, which is more than can be said of praise.
If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation.
No reproach is like that we clothe in a smile, and present with a bow.
The reproach of a friend should be strictly just, but not too frequent.
The severest punishment suffered by a sensitive mind, for injury inflicted upon another, is the consciousness of having done it.
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
Men are almost always cruel in their neighbors’ faults; and make others’ overthrow the badge of their own ill-masked virtue.
Reproof, especially as it relates to children, administered in all gentleness, will render the culprit not afraid, but ashamed to repeat the offence.
If you have a thrust to make at your friend’s expense, do it gracefully, it is all the more effective. Some one says the reproach that is delivered with hat in hand is the most telling.
Before thou reprehend another, take heed thou art not culpable in what thou goest about to reprehend. He that cleanses a blot with blotted fingers makes a greater blur.
The silent upbraiding of the eye is the very poetry of reproach; it speaks at once to the imagination.
I never was fit to say a word to a sinner, except when I had a broken heart myself; when I was subdued and melted into penitence, and felt as though I had just received pardon for my own soul, and when my heart was full of tenderness and pity.
Too much reproach “o’erleaps itself, and falls on t’ other side.” Pricked up too sharply, the delinquent, like a goaded bull, grows sullen and savage, and, the persecution continuing, ends is rushing madly on the spear that wounds him.
Does a man reproach thee for being proud or ill-natured, envious or conceited, ignorant or detracting? Consider with thyself whether his reproaches are true. If they are not, consider that thou art not the person whom he reproaches, but that he reviles an imaginary being, and perhaps loves what thou really art, though he hates what thou appearest to be.