Life & Wisdom Quote by Matthew Prior

Polite society runs on selective vision, and Prior knows it. "Be to their virtue very kind; be to their faults a little blind" isn’t a Hallmark plea for niceness so much as a manual for staying human in a world built on scrutiny. The line flatters virtue, but it also quietly demotes it: goodness needs encouragement, not interrogation. Faults, meanwhile, are treated as inevitable background noise - real, present, but not always worth the social cost of naming.

Prior writes from an early 18th-century culture where reputation is currency and conversation is a competitive sport. In that setting, moral judgment is rarely pure; it’s often a form of entertainment, a weapon, or a bid for status. The couplet’s genius is its double move: it sounds charitable while also instructing self-preservation. If you make a habit of spotlighting people’s defects, you don’t become virtuous; you become tedious, feared, and eventually isolated. Being "a little blind" is not ignorance but tact, a chosen blur that keeps relationships intact.

The phrasing matters. "Very kind" suggests active labor - praise, reinforcement, generosity. "A little blind" suggests restraint, not denial: you can notice the flaw and still decide it doesn’t need to be prosecuted. Prior’s subtext is a social ethic for imperfect people: cultivate goodwill, ration your indignation, and remember that the person you’re judging today is the one who will be judging you tomorrow.