February 10

“Hardness of character is a want of minute attention to the feelings of others. It does not proceed from malignity or a carelessness of inflicting pain, but from a want of delicate perception of those little things by which pleasure is conferred or pain excited.”

SIDNEY SMITH

“His gentleness was inconceivable to those who had not seen it. One might almost say that he was meekness itself rather than a man gifted with that grace, and this gave him such ascendancy over other men that everyone yielded to him, while he, on his part, sought to give up everything to others, desiring nothing, save to see them serving God and saving their souls.”

From The Life of St. Francis de Sales

“However just her indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to give tenderness.”

From Ethics of George Eliot