Quotations by:
    Fenelon, Francois

God bears with imperfect beings, even when they resist his goodness. We ought to imitate this merciful patience and endurance. It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

François Fénelon (1651-1715) French Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet, writer [François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon]

Letter (1710-10-11) to Duchess de Montemart
    (Source)

Sometimes misattributed to Joseph Addison.

This is a shortened version, from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon, Letter 37 [tr. Follen (1829)], of a passage given in Fénelon's Letters to Women, Letter 116 [tr. Lear (1921)] as:

Sometimes even it is necessary to imitate God's dealings with souls, Who often so softens His rebuke that the person rebuked feels rather as though he were accusing himself than being accused. Anything like impatient reproof from being shocked at great faults becomes a very human correction, not that of grace.Our own imperfection makes us hasty to rebuke the imperfect, and it is a very subtle and ll-permeating self-love which cannot forgive the self-love of others. The stronger it is, the more critical the censor will be: there is nothing so irritating to a proud, self-willed mind, as the self-will of a neighbor; and another man's passions seem intolerably ridiculous and unbearable to one who is given up to his own. But he who is full oft he love of God, on the contrary, is full of forbearance, consideration, and indulgence. He waits and adapts himself, and goes softly, one step at a time: the less self-love he has, the more he tolerates that of others in order to heal it.