JUNE 24
"How often we judge unjustly when we judge harshly. The fret and temper we despise may have its rise in the agony of some great unsuspected self-sacrifice, or in the endurance of unavowed, almost intolerable pain. Whoso judges harshly is sure to judge amiss."
Christina Rossetti.
"We meet and mingle, we mark men's speech;
We judge by a word or a fancied slight;
We give our fellows a mere glance each,
Then brand them for ever black or white.
"Meanwhile God's patience is o'er us all,
He probes for motives, He waits for years;
No moment with Him is mean or small,
And His scales are turned by the weight of tears."
JUNE 25
"Perhaps it were better for most of us to complain less of being misunderstood, and to take more care that we do not misunderstand other people. It ought to give us pause at a time to remember that each one has a stock of cut-and-dry judgments on his neighbours, and that the chances are that most of them are quite erroneous. What our neighbour really is we may never know, but we may be pretty certain that he is not what we have imagined, and that many things we have thought of him are quite beside the mark. What he does we have seen, but we have no idea what may have been his thoughts and intentions. The mere surface of his character may be exposed, but of the complexity within we have not the faintest idea. People crammed with self-consciousness and self-conceit are often praised as humble, while shy and reserved people are judged to be proud. Some whose whole life is one subtle studied selfishness get the name of self-sacrifice, and other silent heroic souls are condemned for want of humanity."
The Potter's Wheel, Dr. John Watson.
"To weigh other minds by our own is the false scale by which the greater number of us miscalculate all human actions and most human characters."
John Oliver Hobbes.