Mar 07 2009
Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Friends and kindness
Ah, Quote-a- Thon day! What fun and, easily, my easiest posts to write. Since I’m a sympathetic ear this weekend, kindness and friendship seemed a good subject. Note that I had plenty to work with.
Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
–Elbert Hubbard
Love may be what keeps the world spinning ’round, but friendship is what keeps us from throwing ourselves off it.
– David R. Mead
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
- Oscar Wilde
Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies.
- The Talmud
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.’
–Aldous Huxley
The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe
All my actions have their rise in my inalienable love of mankind.
-Mahatma Gandhi
I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.
- Arthur Conan Doyle
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
–Helen Keller
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
-Elie Wiesel
You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.
-Robert Anton Wilson
I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.
-George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.
-Winston Churchill, in response
And, of course, don’t forget to vote in the poll! As often as you want.
Ooh, I like the last one best, even though it rather slaps all the other kinder quotes across the face.
I love the Plato quote, too… though it’s sometimes VERY hard to do.
I think Weisel’s quote speaks most clearly to me, though. Indifference can tear apart everything. It’s astonishing what people can do to others they are indifferent to. As soon as they care, such behavior becomes unacceptable, especially to themselves.
Thanks for the quotes. A good selection.