Self-righteousness

“ There is nothing more pitiful than that self-righteous virtue which does right, not because it loves the right, still less because it loves the person who is affected by its action, but simply because it wants to keep its own sweet sense of self-righteousness unimpaired. ”

“ Self-denial is not cutting off an indulgence here and there, but laying the axe at the root of the tree of self, of which all indulgences are only greater or smaller branches. Self-righteousness and self-trust, self-seeking and self-pleasing, self-will, self-defence, self-glory—these are a few of the myriad branches of that deeply rooted tree. ”

“ Self-righteousness, by blinding your eyes to the truth, is the direct cause of the most gigantic and the most subtle miseries of the world. These awfully good people who fully realize how hard they have always tried to do right, are the unhappiest people in the world--unless I except Tom, Dick, Harry and Fan, the victims of these self-righteous reformers. ”

“ Self-righteousness would have led me in Pharisaic pride to say, 'Stand aside, I am holier than thou.' But you have only to read the life of the perfect One to know that in so doing I should not have been like Him. ”

“ But the undercurrent of bitterness, the sense of resentment, self-pity, self-righteousness—the thinking that is continually arguing about the faults and sins of the wrongdoer—everything that tends to self-justification by the condemnation of another is all wrong, and must be put out, if we hope ever to attain to our ideals, and know real peace of mind. It matters not how fair our outward living may seem, if the thinking is wrong. ”

“ Of what value can heathen asceticism and merit-making be while the heart is still barred and buttressed with self-righteousness? The longer a man approaches the Holiness of Deity with the offerings of his own self-consequence the greater does the enormity of his offence become and the wider the breach which he attempts to close. ”

“ I see myself now stripped of all sham and pretense and self-righteousness, holding the key to another man's cell. If society will let me, I want to unlock that barred door and for the rest of my life try to get nearer the spirit of Christ. ”

“ I prefer unrighteousness to self-righteousness. The unrighteous man may see the error of his ways and [Pg 4] improve. He may even be lovable. The self-righteous man is unteachable, uncharitable, unloving, unlovable, and unlovely.
You can judge the social standing of a woman from the way she sits down. ”

“ But it does tend to selfishness and, what is worse, self-righteousness, and is very dangerous therefore. What right have I to thank God that I am not as other men are in anything? I have to thank God for the good things he has given to me ”

“ And the self-righteous one never succeeds. It is hard, hard, to be so wise and willing, with such high ideals (the self-righteous one is strong on ideals) , and never to succeed in making Tom, Dick and Harry conform to them. Do you see why Jesus said so often, "Woe comes to the Pharisee" --the self-righteous? And why he called them hypocrites? Of course they are unconsicous of their hypocrisy--self-righteousness blinds them to the truth; they think others are to blame for most of the self-righteous one's own hard conditions. ”

“ May God keep our hearts pure from that selfishness which is the root of all sin.
—Charles Kingsley.
SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.
The thing of all others that unfits men for the reception of Christ as a Saviour, and for the simple reliance on His atoning blood and Divine mercy, is not gross, long profligacy, and outward, vehement transgression; but it is self-complacency, clean, fatal self-righteousness, and self-sufficiency.
—Alexander Maclaren. God has nothing to say to the self-righteous. ”

“ And, though I have been greatly disappointed, yet I have never ceased to love and regard the authority of the Scriptures.
“‘Brethren, we must keep humble. I sometimes tremble when I see individuals endeavoring to exalt themselves, and denounce others who do not see just as they do. Be careful not to err in favor of self. Be careful to avoid self-righteousness. I have noticed that those who have left the second advent cause are the very ones for whom I used to tremble, in view of their arrogancy and self-righteousness. We must not look to ourselves, but must look alone to God. ”

“ But to wave this, the wisdom of the first step hereto, the disclaiming our own righteousness, plainly appears from hence, that it is acting according to truth, to the real nature of things. For what is it more, than to acknowledge with our heart as well as lips, the true state wherein we are? To acknowledge, that we bring with us into the world, a corrupt, sinful nature; more corrupt indeed than we can easily conceive, or find words to express? That hereby we are prone to all that is evil, and averse from all that is good; that we are full of pride, self-will, unruly passions, foolish desires ”

“ Clean from meanness, clean from falsehood, clean from spite, not only for his sake, but for the sake of my own self-respect? Shall I let things take their course until they culminate of themselves in the pre-ordained catastrophe that always follows evil? ”

“ For better or worse, we are, and cannot shirk being, judges of our own conduct. We may be prejudiced, and may properly try to correct our prejudices; we may discount our own disapprovals, and seek to escape from our own self- condemnation. But after all, we must live with ourselves; and it pays to aim to please not only the evanescent impulses whose disapproval will soon be forgotten, but that more deeply rooted and insistent judgment that cannot wholly be stilled. Regret and remorse are among the greatest poisoners of happiness, and prospective ideals must bear that truth in mind. ”

“ If, then, I meet a person whose morality is different from mine, and who justifies what I hold to be vices, I must behave according to my own view. If I am his ruler, I must not treat him as a person making a possibly useful experiment in living, but as a vicious brute, to be restrained or suppressed by all available means. And secondly, since self is the centre, since a 'man works from himself outwards,' it is idle to propose a love of humanity as the guiding motive to morality. ”

“ There, after all, is the rub. A want of hardy self-respect, an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and necessities of our situation in life,—this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature of the case. ”

“ How painfully self–righteous are many! They can talk complacently about having "done their duty," and being "kind to everybody," and having always "kept to their church," and having "never been so very bad" as some, and therefore they seem to think they must go to heaven! ”

“ The collection of evil habits and desires, which before had no identity beside the feeling of self-assertion, is now thought of as one, and gets a general character. It does this of course by its antagonism to the good. The common point in all bad self-assertions, their opposition to good, is recognized, and in all these realizations the self knows it is bad. ”

“ So that society flourish, he is ready to be crushed and ruined, not in the matter of his pleasure only, but even in that of his own good. Selfishness, by which he means all manner of regard to self, is, upon his conscience, the unforgiven sin. ”

“ In other words, no one can see any thing as it really is through the misty spectacles of self-love. We must wish well to another in order to do him justice. Now the virtue in this good-will is not to blind us to his faults, but to our own rival and interposing merits.
12. In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others; for injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected abroad. Never, therefore, expect justice from a vain man; if he has the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can expect. ”

“ I fully admit that the mischief which a person does to himself may seriously affect, both through their sympathies and their interests, those nearly connected with him, and in a minor degree, society at large. When, by conduct of this sort, a person is led to violate a distinct and assignable obligation to any other person or persons, the case is taken out of the self-regarding class, and becomes amenable to moral disapprobation in the proper sense of the term. ”

“ It is not pleasant to have the veil withdrawn, and to see that where love and eager self-sacrifice might be expected their places are occupied by an eager assertion of rights, and a cold, proud, and always petty and stupid, nursing of some supposed injury. ”

“ To the most of us at some time comes this bitter realization of the force that keeps humanity low. High as our sense of justice and of decency may be—serene as may figure the outlook from our lofty chambers of self-respect, we have only to descend into the plain to find manifest the brutal ruggedness of life that our hitherto aloofness has idealized. The impotence of honesty to enforce itself in any question of might; the impotence of morality to convince self-interest of its baseness—these are the first lessons in the despair of being. ”

“ Owning no law, except the law of selfishness, I should be dishonest and cruel if I could believe that the balance of personal pleasure was on the side of inhumanity and roguery. When I blame murderers and thieves, I inconsiderately distinguish between the guilt and folly of the crime, which is a vulgar mistake. The selfishness which respects nothing beyond the requirements of self is the law of our race, and the miscalled criminal has obeyed the governing principle of mankind. ”

“ For indeed—I know what people are—if everything which is mean, dirty, and evil to-day, were to be declared by you to-morrow upright, pure, and good—all these snouts, without any effort of their own, would to-morrow be upright, pure, and good. One thing only would be necessary—the cowardice to annihilate self within themselves. ”

“ Now what I have been saying, is this; it is well that that self-regard, upon which so much is devolved, should be strong; that there should be no apathy, no indifference, upon this point; that if ever a man wanders away into recklessness, into idleness, into disgrace, into utter moral delinquency and lawlessness, he should be brought to a stand, and brought back again, if possible, by this intense and uncontrollable regard for himself—for his own well-being. ”

“ In such a case the care of a personal right or the resistance of a wrong is, in itself, egoistic. Yet may it well be that the person concerned may esteem it better to give up the claim or to yield to the wrong, until he recognizes that the idea of self-sacrifice, however beautiful in itself, may involve a far-reaching wrong to the better members of the body social. ”

“ For, by the laws of spirit, in the right Is every individual character That acts in strict consistence with itself: Self-contradiction is the only wrong. ”

“ How many have tried to thrust the leadings of their conscience on others, in and out of creeds. Again, how many good people have become self-righteous and despised those who differed from them because they mistook matters of opinion and expediency as matters of conscience, through failing to recognize the fallible, variable element in their conscience. ”

“ Pride, hate, revenge, passionateness, sulkiness, malice, meanness, cowardice, and recklessness have no one thing common to the content of all: I please myself and my worse self in all; and, if you abstract what is common, you must say, since the worse self as such can not be an end, that hence the end, under which all are subsumed, is private pleasure; but all that is true in that assertion is that there is no other end. The bad self has indeed, as we have seen and have yet to see, some sort of unity, because we are self-conscious in it ”

“ Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. ”

“ We then admit that something else—call it ‘morality’ or ‘decent behaviour’, or ‘the good of society’—has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by ‘being good’ is giving in to those claims. Some of the things the ordinary self wanted to do turn out to be what we call ‘wrong’: well, we must give them up. Other things, which the self did not want to do, turn out to be what we call ‘right’: well, we shall have to do them. ”

“ So that to make allowances for inadvertence, misunderstanding, for the partialities of self-love, and the false light which anger sets things in—I say, to make allowances for these, is not to be spoken of as an instance of humbleness of mind, or meekness and moderation of temper, but as what common sense would suggest, to avoid judging wrong of a matter before us, though virtue and morals were out of the case. And therefore it as much belongs to ill men, who will indulge the vice I have been arguing against, as to good men who endeavour to subdue it in themselves. ”

“ The self-esteem, if not watchful, is revengeful; and society sanctions promptly the fierce redress—that wild justice of revenge—which punishes without appeal to law, with its own right hand, the treacherous guest who has abused the unsuspecting confidence which welcomed him to a seat upon the sacred hearth. ”

“ Therefore, any person who, be the cause what it may or the circumstances what they may, deprives himself by violence of his own life, must be said to be guilty of an act inexcusable and cowardly, as well as mean, and entirely opposed to the principle of independence and self respect. ”

“ So we might think; but a true ethical insight shews us that this affection of anger, of hatred, is in reality the expression of justice, and derives from the law of righteousness, which is not above God, nor is it dependent on His Will, for it is Himself. 'He cannot deny Himself' ”