WISE THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR

Anne Perry (Author, who is LDS) : If we say or do anything that drags someone else down, discourages them, makes them weaker, less likely to succeed in what is good and beautiful, then we sink with them, as if we were tied at the ankle. We may have crippled or debilitated them, but we have injured ourselves even more. And if we help, encourage, lift others, and make them better able to reach for the stars, we rise with them. If I can keep remembering that, then I will guard my tongue more, praise more, encourage more. I will leave people better and stronger than I found them, filled with a conviction that success is possible. (Meridian Magazine, WWW)


C. S. Lewis: Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less. . . But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least to dislike it less. (Mere Christianity p. 116)


Mother Teresa: …Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.