— The Great Gatsby (1925), Chapter 1
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जब भी किसी की आलोचना करने का मन करे … तो बस इतना याद रखना कि दुनिया में सबको वे सहूलियतें नहीं मिलीं जो तुम्हें मिली हैं।
What it means
Read the last four words and notice whom this advice is for. That you have had assumes the listener is the one holding the advantages; it is counsel passed from a comfortable father to a comfortable son, and it does not work at all in the mouth of someone with less. It is not a general rule about tolerance but an instruction aimed at one kind of speaker.
It is also narrower than it sounds. The trigger is the impulse — whenever you feel like criticizing — rather than the criticism itself, and nothing here forbids the judgement. What it forbids is making the judgement while pretending the two of you started from the same line.
What it teaches you
Before saying the thing you were about to say about someone’s work, money, or discipline, name one concrete advantage you had that they did not: a school, English at home, an introduction, a parent who could absorb one bad month. If you cannot name one, this advice was not addressed to you and your criticism stands; if you can, you may still criticise, but not as though the outcome were entirely their doing.
अर्थ और सीख
इस सलाह के आख़िरी शब्द बताते हैं कि यह किससे कही जा रही है — ‘जो तुम्हें मिली हैं’, यानी यह उसी से कही गई है जिसे सहूलियतें मिली हुई हैं। यह आलोचना करने से मना नहीं करती; बस इतना कहती है कि आलोचना करते समय यह मत भूलिए कि दोनों की शुरुआत एक ही जगह से नहीं हुई थी। सीख यह कि बोलने से पहले एक ठोस सहूलियत गिनिए जो आपको मिली और सामने वाले को नहीं।
Where it comes from
Nick Carraway’s father, in the novel’s opening paragraph. Most reproductions run it as one sentence; in the book it is split by ‘he told me’, which is why the version here carries an ellipsis.
Nick offers it as the source of his famous reserve — and the rest of the novel is him breaking it. The advice is about privilege, not politeness: the point is unequal advantages, not good manners.
