Dead Leaves

You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others’ faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.
- Ruskin

Searing Out the Faults of Mankind

I remember that in the time of childhood I was very religious; I rose in the night, was punctual in the performance of my devotions, and abstinent. One night I had been sitting in the presence of my father, not having closed my eyes during the whole time, and with the holy Koran in my embrace, whilst members around us were asleep. I said to my father; “not one of these lifteth up his head to perform his genuflexions, but they are all so fast asleep you would say they are dead.” He replied: “life of your father, it were better thou also wert asleep than to be searing out the faults of mankind. The boaster sees nothing but himself, having a veil of conceit before his eyes. If he were endowed with an eye capable of discerning God, he would not discern any person weaker than himself.
- Saadi
The Gulistan

Fault-Finding

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.
Og Mandino

Fault You Find With Another

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.
- Wayne Dyer

The Easiest Way - Fault-Finding

Napoleon said that the man who never makes mistakes never makes war. Those who content themselves with pointing out the mistakes and blunders of those who are in the struggle, are making, themselves, the greatest of all blunders. Nothing is easier than fault-finding. No talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character are required to set up in the grumbling business.
- Robert West

Strike an Average - Black Faults

I have long been disposed to judge men by their average. If it is reasonably high, I am charitable with faults that look pretty black.
- Ed Howe

Even In Paradise

Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early enough... The fault finder will find faults even in Paradise.
- Thoreau

Fertilizing Faults

It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as having overcome them, that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with the weeds of the field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place of their birth, enrich and improve it more than if none had sprung there before.
- Pope

Considerate

There is a thought in the following incident from a late book: “A dear old friend of mine used to say with the truest Christian charity, when he heard any one being loudly condemned for some fault: ‘Ah! Well, yes, it seems very bad to me, because that’s not my way of sinning’. - Williams

The Prophet said, "Beware of suspicion, for suspicion is the worst of false tales; and do not look for the others' faults and do not spy, and do not be jealous of one another, and do not desert (cut your relation with) one another, and do not hate one another; and O Allah's worshipers! Be brothers (as Allah has ordered you)!"
- Sahih Al Bukhari

Considerate

There is a thought in the following incident from a late book: “A dear old friend of mine used to say with the truest Christian charity, when he heard any one being loudly condemned for some fault: ‘Ah! Well, yes, it seems very bad to me, because that’s not my way of sinning’.
- Williams