It is curious that our own offenses1 should seem so much less heinous2 than the offenses 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 untoward4 events to consider them, find it easy to condone5 them. For all I know we are right to do this; they are part of us and we must accept the good and bad in ourselves together.
But when we come to judge others, it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge hem3, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit6 us in the eyes of the world. To take a trivial stance: how scornful we are when we catch someone out telling a lie; but who can say that he has ever told not one, but a hundred?
There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness
