A Quote by Charles Sumner

There are two sorts of pity: one is a balm and the other a poison; the first is realized by our friends, the last by our enemies.

Charles Sumner

Quote Topics

Balm Enemies First Friends Last Other Our Pity Poison Realized Two

Quote Author

Charles Sumner
American - Politician
January 6, 1811 - March 11, 1874

Friends should be very delicate and careful in administering pity as medicine, when enemies use the same article as poison.

John Frederick Boyes

It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certainly become an enemy and one of our enemies a friend.

Pierre Jean de Beranger

We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.

Pythagoras

The gift our enemy may be able to bring us: to see aspects of ourselves that we cannot discover any other way than through our enemies. Our friends seldom tell us these things; they are our friends precisely because they are able to overlook or ignore this part of us. The enemy is thus not merely a hurdle to be leaped on the way to God. The enemy can be the way to God. We cannot come to terms with our shadow except through our enemies.

Walter Wink

Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.

Mao Zedong

Every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.

Clarence Darrow

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other - our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That's to help each other, not hurt each other.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

You see, we are here, as far as I can tell, to help each other; our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our enemies. That is to help each other and not hurt each other.

Stevie Ray Vaughan

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

Leonardo da Vinci

It is a pity that so many Americans today think of the Indian as a romantic or comic figure in American history without contemporary significance. In fact, the Indian plays much the same role in our society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith.

Felix S. Cohen

Our most valuable teachers are our enemies.While our friends can help us in many ways, only our enemies can provide us with the challenge we need to develop tolerance, patience, and compassionthree virtues essential for building character, developing peace of mind, and bringing us true happiness.

Dalai Lama

To accept Christ is to know the meaning of the words 'as he is, so are we in this world.' We accept his friends as our friends, his enemies as our enemies, his ways as our ways, his rejection as our rejection, his cross as our cross, his life as our life and his future as our future. If this is what we mean when we advise the seeker to accept Christ, we had better explain it to him. He may get into deep spiritual trouble unless we do.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

Let us not make the poor our friends by our alms, not our enemies by our scorns. We had better have the ears of God full of their prayers, than heaps of money in our own coffers with their curses.

Thomas Adams

Whoever will not love his enemies cannot know the Lord and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us to love our enemies in such way that we pity their souls as if they were our own children.