Six Tips for Loving Your Enemies
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Six Tips for Loving Your Enemies
The temptation is to be stern and cruel back, but the only way to diminish the vicious cycle of hate is to address its origins, which lie in suffering. There is no point punching back. We must – as the old prophets always told us – learn to look upon our enemies with sorrow, pity and, when we can manage it, a forgiving kind of love.
The School of Life • On Being Nice (The School of Life Library)
As Martin [Luther] King points out so very well, when Jesus said to love thy enemy [Matthew 5:44], he was not talking about friendship love, nor was he talking about romantic love. [1] He was not talking about deep liking and appreciation. He was talking about what the Quakers and William Penn pledged to the Native Americans during colonial times: ... See more
Violence Begets Violence
So instead of hating our enemies, let’s pity them and thank God that life has not made us what they are. Instead of heaping condemnation and revenge upon our enemies, let’s give them our understanding, our sympathy, our help, our forgiveness, and our prayers.
Dale Carnegie • How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (Dale Carnegie Books)
“We begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves.”
Ryan Holiday • Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent
Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. (Only strong people are safe people, the measure of strength being not the absence of vulnerability — and “weakness” is just a judgment term for vulnerability — but the ability to carry one’s vulnerability with such self-awareness and valor so as not t... See more
Special Edition: 18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
The basic principles of his way of life cut straight through to the despair of his fellows and found it groundless. By inference he says, “You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God. You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives. Your words must be Yea—Nay; anything else is evil. Hatred is destructive
... See moreHoward Thurman • Jesus and the Disinherited
LOVE YOUR ENEMY AS YOURSELF We must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves—to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not. I admit that th
... See moreC. S. Lewis • The C. S. Lewis Bible: For Reading, Reflection, and Inspiration
Only Jesus insists on loving the enemy: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” He may be the only person in antiquity to have given this instruction.