Love of enemies

“ Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you. ”

“ But the character and groundwork of the other species of love—of our love, namely, of our enemies, is widely different from this. Let us ask what is the exact meaning of the precept: "Love your enemies?" Does it mean, love them with a natural love—love them as you love your friends? Does it mean, make your love spring up towards those that hate you, just in the same way, and by the same natural process as it springs up towards those that love you? ”

“ To love one’s neighbors, to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have I hated in my life? ”

“ They also are my countrymen. General, there is a good old book which says, "Love your enemies." What a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors and to devastate the fair face of the beautiful world.
STARKE—But think of our men who have laid down their lives so bravely.
LEE—The loss of our gallant officers and men throughout the army causes me to weep tears of [48] blood and to wish that I might never hear the sound of a gun again. ”

“ And yet there is an anger that purifies the heart:
The anger of the better against the baser part,
Against the false and wicked, against the tyrant's sword,
Against the enemies of love, and all that hate the Lord. ”

“ Love your enemies." Let them treat you as unjustly as they will; be it hard or easy for you; still you must love them, do good to them, pray for them. But, you will say, by way of a last objection, that is a counsel of spiritual perfection, not a command under pain of sin. ”

“ Psychologically and in principle, the precept “Love your enemies” is not self-contradictory. It is merely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our oppressors, we are fairly familiar. ”

“ Preaching to the enemy is a great deed of love. Our enemies are not to blame because they are enabled, with the aid of a kind of persistent variant of the morality of earlier days, to maintain an existence outside the current of the time. ”

“ Our faith in others betrayeth wherein we would fain have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer.
And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable. ”

“ You will have many enemies, but even your foes will love you. Life will bring you many misfortunes, but you will find your happiness in them, [pg 314] and will bless life and will make others bless it—which is what matters most. ”

“ If my deadly enemy, who bears an everlasting hatred to me, who strives with hot desire to drink my heart's blood--if my deadly enemy were to lay at my feet as I on that evening kneeled before thee, I who am steadfast in hate, I who know no pity, should weep hot tears of compassion--and I was not your enemy, I had loved you with a love as infelt and holy as is permitted to a human soul, I would have given the last drop of my heart's blood for one tear from your eyes,--and you, a weak, mild, pitiful woman, would not weep that tear.... ”

“ They were like two enemies in love with one another. ”

“ He who treats his friends and enemies alike has neither love nor justice. ”

“ Thy whet-stones of the blood, like poisonous wine
In young men's hearts, till rage and death be stirred.
Oh, take not from the fierce mate-murdering bird
The heart to give my people, the blind war
Within, that burneth most where brethren are.
War with the stranger, yes; no stint thereof;
Terror is there, and glory, and great love;
But not the mad bird-rage that slays at home.
Such let thine office be. And if there come
True-hearted war, I will not fail to uphold
This land victorious where great deeds are told. ”

“ You don't turn beggars out. But you are not good enough to be rebels!—as you fools call us. You don't stop to think that your father's brother had the courage to be one! And you don't recall that some of you murdered him! At night, while he stood faithfully at his gun! And his blood is on you—his own kin—as well as the rest. Shall I tell you some more of the things in my heart? Oh, there won't be any talk of love between us after this—will there? ”

“ Many follow her as an inspired being sent from heaven to lead them to victory; and the foes, as they hear the war shout of her followers, and see her approaching, fly, terror-stricken before her. The fire of revenge for her slaughtered love still burns unquenched within her bosom. Death—death alone can ever extinguish its consuming flame. ”

“ War is less savage now than it was when your ancestors and mine tortured each other in the name of God and the king."
"All murder is done for love of one sort or another: war is love of country; revenge is love of some one else—men rarely kill from hate," Vincent stammered, his heart beating at the nearness of what he was dying to say. ”

“ Suppose that when you were very angry—say at me—you unconsciously betrayed me to enemies—or fixed it so that some brute would come and beat me, put me in prison, kill me, and then, when you repented and loved me again, and tried to get the brute to stop coming to beat and kill me, you couldn't! ”

“ If we die, let the enemy kill us, let our blood fill up their cup, that the day of vengance that is coming on them may be hastened." Then he began and said, "Lord, it is thy enemies' day, hour and power; they may not be idle, but hast thou no other work for them, but to send them after us? ”

“ To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in the “Teaching of the twelve apostles.” [128] But to love one has to put to oneself the task for all one’s life of love towards an enemy, to do him good through love and to perfect oneself in love for him. ”

“ IS IT LOVE THAT IS TO GIVE DEATH TO THEE? SURELY THE ENEMY HAS BEEN IN NO HASTE. ‘But how shall I hate thee, even though towards me thou hast become cold? When my discourse is most angry concerning thy name in thine absence, Of sudden thine image, with its old dearness, comes visibly into my mind, And a secret voice whispers that love will yet prevail! ”

“ My love, you know that your spearmen, exhausted as they are, cannot fight two thousand men. They will be slaughtered like swine in to-morrow’s battle, and our cause will be lost unless I put fresh fear in the hearts of the enemy. ”

“ But worse, more ignorant in love and hate,
Far, far more abject is thine Enemy:
Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the freight
Of thy offences be a heavy weight:
Oh grief! that Earth's best hopes rest all with Thee! ”

“ How is it that a cloud has suddenly passed over the mind of these two warriors, and tarnished their intellect to such an extent, that these two men, who so long loved one another as brothers, whose friendship was cited among the nation, have suddenly become implacable enemies, so that, when they see each other, their eyes flash lightning, and their hands seek their weapons to commit murder? ”

“ A heart in which such things as pride and evil desire, lust, worldly ambition, and ill-tempers remain, is like a citadel in which traitors lurk to respond to the call of outward enemies. But when the heart is sanctified, and we are equipped with the armour of which Paul wrote to the Ephesians, the attacks of the enemy can be continually resisted. ”

“ The enemy will not kill you. You are too young and pretty. Some one of them will take you, and I will get a big party of our people and rescue you." But the woman cried "No, no, I will die here with you." ”

“ And if our enemy aught winneth of us by our falling, (for it is his pleasure, [1] ) he loseth manifold more in our rising by charity and meekness. And this glorious rising, it is to him so great sorrow and pain for the hate that he hath to our soul, that he burneth continually in envy. ”

“ But you say, you will hurt and grieve your enemy: so even that doing is against humanity. Nevertheless, this I would ye should consider, that ye cannot hurt and grieve your enemies, but ye must first greatly hurt your own people. ”

“ Shall we know the barren triumph of the will?—or the equally barren triumph inertia, helplessness, barren irresponsibility.
And still, as far as there is any passion in the war, it is a passion for the embrace with death. The desire to deal death and to take death. The enemy is the bride, whose body we will reduce with rapture of agony and wounds. ”

“ He was hundreds of miles in the heart of an enemy's country—an enemy who, had they possessed it, would have given his weight in gold for the pleasure of burning him to death with a slow fire—adding to his torments, both mental and physical, every ingredient that savage ingenuity could supply. ”

“ It is attended throughout with doubt, hope, sorrow, joy, defeat, and triumph. When the good fight is fought, error yields up its weapons and kisses the feet of Love, while white-winged peace sings to the heart a song of angels. ”

“ Surely it is not surrender when the wound is mortal and the enemy is—that one. But enemy! What shallow, stuffy nonsense that is! We have handed down our restless memories, the old forlorn absurdities, father to son and son again, and now I am, well, just the last echo of the refrain before the end. ”

“ Let bystanders accuse us to their heart’s content, but, when necessary, we will lie like wolves, too! we will spring forward, suddenly, and seize the enemy by the throat: one must live, brother, one must live, and are we to be held responsible for the fact that there is such great lure and such fine taste in blood! ”

“ He remembered his mother’s love for him, and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed impossible. ”

“ She gave up trying to understand herself, and the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catch-words. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk. But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters—the enemy within. ”

“ The zeal of friends it is that razes me, And not the hate of enemies. ”

“ Surrounded on every hand by a fierce and cruel enemy--prepared at every moment to witness scenes of barbarity and bloodshed in their most appalling shapes--isolated from all society beyond the gates of their own fortress, and by consequence reposing on and regarding each other as vital links in the chain of their wild and adventurous existence,--it can easily be understood with what sincere and unaffected grief they lamented the sudden cutting off even of those who least assimilated in spirit and character with themselves. ”

“ BANISHMENT I am banished from the patient men who fight.
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life's broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell; ”

“ At length I felt a wish that I might find a snug and secure dwelling-place in the bosom, at least, of some one man. But here also I failed. One and the same man is at war with himself. Reason wages war with the passions; one passion with another passion. Duty calls one way, and inclination another. Lust, anger, avarice, ambition, are all up in arms, each pursuing its own purposes, and warmly engaged in the battle. ”

“ All is fair in love and war; and if this was not love, it was the usual thing that stands as a counterpart for it. ”

“ I made you my worthy enemy. I bound the difficult habit of years upon you like an honourable chain—and hardened, hardened it, till at last your father lay dead in you, and you had an armour not even success could pierce. ”

“ To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love. ”