When something in a person seems to you completely unacceptable or ridiculous: "What! He is like that, he behaves like that, he says things like that, he does things like that," – you should say to yourself: "Well, well, but perhaps I do the same thing without being aware of it. I would do better to look into myself first before criticising him, so as to make sure that I am not doing the very same thing in a slightly different way." If you have the good sense and intelligence to do this each time you are shocked by another person's behaviour, you will realise that in life your relations with others are like a mirror which is presented to you so that you can see more easily and clearly the weaknesses you carry within you.
In a general and almost absolute way anything that shocks you in other people is the very thing you carry in yourself in a more or less veiled, more or less hidden though perhaps in a slightly different guise which allows you to delude yourself. And what in yourself seems inoffensive becomes monstrous as soon as you see it in others.
