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Complaints

Complaints, in general usage, are expressions of displeasure.

Quotes

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  • If you get your head above the crowd, you're going to be criticized. So get used to the idea.
    • Matthew C. Brush as quoted by Dale Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, chapter 21.
  • Many people get a sense of savage satisfaction out of denouncing those who are better educated than they are or more successful.
    • Dale Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, chapter 20.
  • Complaints … encourage those who hear our complaints to behave like those we complain about. Once divulged, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable. … It is better to praise the favors others have done for you, so as to win still more of them. When you tell how those absent have favored you, you are asking those present to do the same.
    • Baltasar Gracián, Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia, § 129 (Christopher Maurer trans.)
  • Every one must see daily instances of people who complain from a mere habit of complaining.
  • It rhymes with complaining.
    • Matt Groening, providing a fool-proof method—in large part because it is so thematically relevant to his signature works, Life in Hell and The Simpsons—for remembering how to pronounce his last name; as quoted in "We hope you like rabbits — introducing 'Life In Hell'" by Al Morch, San Francisco Examiner (March 26, 1986), p. 49.
  • No one ever kicks a dead dog.
    • William James Hutchins, as quoted by Dale Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, chapter 20.
  • If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
    • Abraham Lincoln As quoted in The Life and Public Service of Abraham Lincoln (1865) by Henry J. Raymond
  • I have noticed this, that when a man is full of the Holy Ghost he is the very last man to be complaining of other people.
    • Dwight L. Moody, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 420.
  • Surely, human is created uneasy; Murmuring when misfortune afflicts him, while selfish when success befalls him...
    • Quran 70:19-21
  • When you see anyone complaining
    of such and such a person's ill-nature and bad temper,
    know that the complainant is bad-tempered,
    forasmuch as he speaks ill of that bad-tempered person,
    because he alone is good-tempered who is quietly forbearing
    towards the bad-tempered and ill-natured.
    • Rumi, Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, IV, 771-4
  • Let him alone and let him curse; for the Lord has bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on my distress, and the Lord will repay me with good for this cursing of me today.
  • I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, 'Tis all barren!
    • Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) In the Street, Calais
  • Some people are never content with their lot, let what will happen. Clouds and darkness are over their heads, alike whether it rain or shine. To them every incident is an accident, and every accident a calamity.
    • Charles Spurgeon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 420.
  • From mad dogs and grumbling professors may we all be delivered, and may we never take the complaint from either of them.
    • Charles Spurgeon, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 421.
  • See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
  • At one end of this scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, “Why to do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)
  • Complaining as well as faultfinding and reactivity strengthen the ego's sense of boundary and separateness on which it's survival depends. But they also strengthen the ego in another way by giving it a feeling of superiority on which it thrives. It may not be immediately apparent how complaining, say, about a traffic jam, about politicians, about the “greedy wealthy” or the “lazy unemployed,” or your colleagues or ex-spouse, men or women, can give you a sense of superiority. Here is why. When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong. There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right.
    • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, (2005)
  • Nothing is easier than fault-finding. No talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, is required to set up in the grumbling business. But those that are moved by a genuine desire to do good have little time for murmuring or complaint.
    • Robert West, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 420.
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