At the LinkedIn Public Speaking Group on September 1, 2024 I saw that Tony DeMeo had featured the following quotation from Elbert Hubbard (which also is at BrainyQuote):
“The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.”
Wikipedia says Elbert Green Hubbard was a writer who lived from June 19, 1856 to May 7, 1915. He died on the ocean liner RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed off Ireland.
Where did that exact quote appear? I looked on Google and at Google Books, and found it first turned up in the June 1953 issue of Coronet magazine (Volume 34, number 2, pages 36 to 38) in a republished article by Elbert Hubbard titled Get in Line – or Get Out!. You can find that magazine at the Internet Archive. But that was 38 years after Mr. Hubbard died! In this century the quote has turned up repeatedly, without a discussion of when or where.
Where did the article appear during his lifetime? The original was titled Get Out or Get in Line. It was in the April 1902 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, and it also was reprinted as a twenty-page booklet which you also can find at the Internet Archive. The paragraph containing the quote has a word changed – originally it said contumely rather than criticism, and it begins:
“The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified and misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment….”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines contumely as:
“harsh language or treatment arising from haughtiness and contempt”
A 1900 portrait of Elbert Hubbard came from Wikimedia Commons.
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