Accept yourself

by W.S. Maugham

"At first sight it is curious that our own offences should seem to us so much less heinous than the offences of others. I suppose the reason is that we know all the circumstances that have occasioned them and so manage to excuse in ourselves what we cannot excuse in others.

We turn our attention away from our own defects, and when we are forced by untoward events to consider them find it easy to condone them.

For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and the bad in ourselves together. But when we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world...

For my part I do not think I am any better or any worse than most people, but I know that if I set down every action in my life and every thought that has crossed my mind the world would consider me a monster of depravity."