英語經(jīng)典美文誦讀100篇：036.on motes and beams

[00:05.05]036.On Motes and Beams [00:11.36]It is curious that our own offenses should seem so much less heinous than the offenses of others. [00:19.55]I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them [00:25.29]and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others. [00:31.42]We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them, [00:40.06]find it easy to condone them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us [00:48.07]and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together. [00:53.27]But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, [01:01.64]but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything [01:08.16]that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial instance: [01:16.71]how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; [01:21.82]but who can say that he has not told not one, but a hundred? [01:28.30]There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, [01:36.11]of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, [01:44.19]or more opportunity, and so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, [01:51.37]but potentially they are the same. For my part, I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, [02:01.44]but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind, [02:09.37]the world would consider me a monster of depravity. [02:15.35]The knowledge that these reveries are common to all men should inspire one with tolerance to oneself as well as to others. [02:25.31]It is well also if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, [02:31.99]with humor, and if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously.

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