Don't accuse anyone else. ~ Vincent van Gogh

Accusation is the act of accusing or charging another with a crime or with a lighter offense, or with fault or blame for some act to be condemned.

Quotes

Sorted alphabetically by author or source
  • To accuse is so easy that it is infamous to do so where proof is impossible!
  • ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • I've been accused of every death except the casualty list of the World War.
  • It is not uncommon for ignorant and corrupt men to falsely charge others with doing what they imagine that they themselves, in their narrow minds and experience, would have done under the circumstances of a given case, and the surest check, often the only check, on such perjury, is to recognize the impossibility that men of larger instruction and resources and experience could have been guilty of such conduct.
  • Love the others and you will be loved!” is a saying that might sound as a terrible and unjust accusation against all the innocents that have been hated and perhaps even tortured and killed.
    • Fausto Cercignani in: Brian Morris, Simply Transcribed. Quotations from Writings by Fausto Cercignani, 2014, quote 58.
  • Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them.
  • Trust me, no tortures which the poets feign,
    Can match the fierce, the unutterable pain
    He feels, who night and day, devoid of rest,
    Carries his own accuser in his breast.
    • Juvenal, reported in William Gifford, The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis‎ (1806), p. 408.
  • When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing to himself.
  • Let your accusations be few in number, even if they be just.
  • Believe not each accusing tongue,
    As most weak persons do;
    But still believe that story wrong,
    Which ought not to be true!
    • Richard Brinsley Sheridan, reported in Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Carcanet: a Literary Album, Containing Select Passages from the Most Distinguished English Writers (1828), p. 132.
  • Qui s'excuse s'accuse.
    • Who apologizes, accuses himself.
    • Quoted by Wood, V.-C, Tichborne v. Tichborne (1867), 15 W. R. 1074; by Lord Bramwell, Derry v. Peek (1889), L. R. 14 Ap. Ca. 347.
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