Whenever someone helps or hinders you, or praises or criticizes you, remember that they see you only through the lens of their own impressions. If they act or speak from a warped perspective, they hurt themselves — not you. For if someone mistakes truth for falsehood, the truth is not harmed, but only the person deceived. Keeping this in mind, gently turn away any insult or injury. “It seems right to them, though they are mistaken.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

Whenever someone helps or hinders you, or praises or criticizes you, remember that they see you only through the lens of their own impressions. If they act or speak from a warped perspective, they hurt themselves — not you.

When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. — attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, physicist, biologist, and artist

We only hurt ourselves when we hide our realness away.

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

to harm another is to harm oneself

It is true that when we harm others, we harm ourselves; but it is just as true that when we help others, we also help ourselves.

Another person will not hurt you without your cooperation; you are hurt the moment you believe yourself to be.

You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.

There are many ways that we hurt ourselves when we don’t like who we are.

When people know you too well, they eventually see your damage, your weirdness, carelessness, and mean streak. They see how ordinary you are after all, that whatever it was that distinguished you in the beginning is the least of who you actually are. This will turn out to be the greatest gift we can offer another person: letting them see, every so often, beneath all the trappings and pretense to the truth of us.