The Belittler

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 14, 1904

BEWARE of people who are constantly belittling others, finding flaws and defects in their characters, or slyly insinuating that they are not quite what they ought to be. Such persons are dangerous, and not to be trusted. A disparaging mind is a limited, rutty, unhealthy mind. It can neither see nor acknowledge good in others. It is a jealous mind: it is positively painful to it to hear others spoken well of, praised or commended for any virtue or good point. If it can not deny the existence of an alleged good, it will seek to minimize it by a malicious “if” or “but,” or try in some other way to throw a doubt on the character of the person praised.

A large, healthy, normal mind will see the good in another much more quickly than the evil, but a narrow, belittling mind has an eye only for faults,—for the unlovely and the crooked. The clean, the beautiful, the true, and the magnanimous are too large for its vision. It delights in tearing down or destroying, but it is incapable of upbuilding.

Whenever you hear a person trying to belittle another, discard him from your list of friends, unless you can help him to remedy his fault. Do not flatter yourself that those who tell you of the failings of other people, and criticize and hold them up to ridicule, will not treat you in the same way when an opportunity presents itself. Such people are incapable of true friendship, for true friendship helps, instead of hinders; it never exposes the weak point in a friend's character, or suffers any one to speak ill of him.

One of the finest fruits of culture is the power to see the man or woman whom God made in his own image, and not the one who is scarred by faults and deficiencies. It is only the generous, loving soul who ever attains to this degree of culture. It is only the broad, charitable, magnanimous, great-hearted man or woman who is blind to the defects of others, and enlarges their good qualities.

An opportunity of associating with people who see the best instead of the worst in us is worth far, far more to us than an opportunity to make money. It increases a hundredfold our power to develop noble characters.

We are all of us constantly, but unconsciously, molding others by our thoughts about them. The qualities you see in your friend and those with whom you come in contact you tend to enlarge. If you see only the little, mean, contemptible side of people, you can not help them out of their faults, for you only intensify and fix them; but if you see the good, the noble, the aspiring traits in them, you will help to develop these qualities until they crowd out the base, unworthy ones.

Everywhere, the world over, this unconscious interchange of influence is at work, hindering or helping, according to its nature.—Success.