James Baldwin Quotes

We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.

Forgive everybody but yourself.

Sometimes, of all the people in the world, the one who is the hardest to forgive-as well as perhaps the one who is most in need of our forgiveness-is the person looking back at us in the mirror.

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

I have a pretty clear picture of the whole weight of my life, and there are things that I've done that are good, and I'm proud of them. There are things that I'm really not proud of, and that they, you have to look at me with a perspective, and I try really hard to do that, to keep from thinking I'm cool and ever so smart.

I don't feel like a very nostalgic person. I think about the past much more clinically. When I look back and wonder, 'Why was I doing that? Was it a waste of time?' I don't beat myself up. Instead, I say, 'I'm so glad I did that, because now I really know what matters to me.'

I'm not saying I'm perfect. But I'm someone who analyses and reflects on what I do, whether it's in keeping with the ethics that I talk about in public. That's how I've been all my life.

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbour's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm and peaceful mind.

Wink at small faults; remember thou hast great ones.

I'm ashamed of what I did, but I'm not ashamed of what I've done to correct my mistakes..... I'm proud of who I am.

It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them.

Forgiving yourself, not guilt, increases personal accountability.

There is no end to one's faults. To think of them makes one humble.

If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.

It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.

I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought. Giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I’m capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me, and I’ve concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me.

I can pardon everybody's mistakes except my own.

Forgive others, forgive yourself, forgive yourself for not being perfect, and accept responsibility for your own life.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself.

It is only when you're lying to yourself or hating some aspect of yourself that you'll get an emotional charge from someone else's behavior.

I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.

You forgive yourself for every failure because you are trying to do the right thing. God knows that and you know it. Nobody else may know it.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

All the work I do is personal, so the good stuff and the bad stuff that you see in there is all good stuff and bad stuff that I have, and part of the journey, for me, has been to embrace these things that I find embarrassing about myself: my stubbornness, my ego, my maudlin-ness - these things that I see myself do, and I go, 'Oh, David, stop that!'