If We Could Read the Secret History of Our Enemies, We Should Find in Each Man’s Life Sorrow and Suffering Enough To Disarm All Hostility

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? Ann Landers? Mary A. McIver? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Feeling empathy for an adversary is difficult to achieve when one’s mind is filled with indignation. The following intriguing statement claims that comprehensive knowledge of the past of one’s foe would yield a startling insight: If we could read the secret history of …

Though Music Be a Universal Language, It Is Spoken with All Sorts of Accents

George Bernard Shaw? Alan Lomax? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? Henry David Thoreau? Dear Quote Investigator: I believe that the famous playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw said something like the following: Music may be a universal language, but it’s spoken with all sorts of peculiar accents. I checked some quotation references and was unable to …

We Are Too Prone to Judge Ourselves by Our Ideals and Other People by Their Acts

Dwight Morrow? Harold Nicolson? Harold Nicholson? William Nevins? Tryon Edwards? Edward Wigglesworth? Stephen R. Covey? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a pervasive problem in human psychology of a self-serving double-standard that can be stated as follows: We judge ourselves by our ideals, but we judge others by their actions. This remark has been attributed to …

We Judge Ourselves by What We Feel Capable of Doing, While Others Judge Us by What We Have Already Done

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? William Nevins? Stephen M. R. Covey? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The way we judge ourselves often differs markedly from the way others judge us. We tend to evaluate ourselves based on what we are capable of doing, or what we intend to do, or what we say we will do. However, no …