Confucius — "Be strict with yourself but least reproachful of others and complaint is kept af…"
Be strict with yourself but least reproachful of others and complaint is kept afar.
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More from Confucius
"A man without constancy cannot be a diviner or a physician."
"To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue... gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness."
"It is not possible for one to be a gentleman and yet not be benevolent."
"The Master said, 'The superior man is universally benevolent, and not partisan. The mean man is partisan, and not universally benevolent.'"
"He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the North Star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it."
About Confucius (551-479 BCE)
Chinese philosopher and teacher whose teachings (compiled by his students in the Analects) became the foundational ethical framework of East Asian civilization for 2,500 years. Closely associated with Mencius (his most-influential follower a century later). For an intellectual contrast, see Laozi, near-contemporary Chinese sage and Tao Te Ching author — Confucius systematized social order through ritual and family hierarchy; Laozi's Taoist effortless-action philosophy argued such systems were the disease, not the cure. The two founding poles of Chinese moral philosophy — every East Asian moral tradition since has positioned itself between them.
The standard scholarly entry points to Confucius's work: Philip J. Ivanhoe (Georgetown, Chinese philosophy) — Confucian Moral Self Cultivation (2000); Edward Slingerland (UBC, Asian Studies) — Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor (2003); Tu Weiming (Harvard, Confucian scholar) — Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation (1985). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Confucius.
Details
From a teaching on self-discipline and judgment of others
Date: c. 551-479 BCE
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Hold yourself to high standards while being gentle and forgiving when judging others. When you focus on your own faults rather than cataloging everyone else's shortcomings, resentment and grievance naturally fade. You stop blaming people around you because you're busy improving yourself, and the bitterness that fuels constant complaining loses its foothold in your daily life and relationships.
Relevance to Confucius
Confucius built his teaching around self-cultivation (xiushen) as the root of social harmony, insisting a gentleman examines himself daily. As a teacher who traveled between warring states seeking rulers who would listen, he met constant rejection yet blamed circumstances rather than men. His Analects repeatedly contrast the junzi, who demands much of himself, with the petty person, who demands much of others.
The era
Confucius lived during the late Spring and Autumn period (551-479 BCE), when Zhou dynasty authority had collapsed and rival states waged endless war. Nobles blamed each other for chaos, courts festered with intrigue, and ritual propriety was decaying. Confucius argued that political order could only be rebuilt from personal moral reform upward, making inward accountability rather than outward blame a radical prescription for a complaint-saturated, finger-pointing aristocratic culture.
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