Love your enemies

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Love towards enemies. It is difficult, seldom does it succeed—as with everything absolutely beautiful. But then what happiness when you attain it! There is an exquisite sweetness in this love, even in the foretaste of it. And this sweetness is just in the inverse ratio to the attractiveness of the object of love. Yes, the spiritual voluptuousness of love towards enemies. ”

“ Why should we love our enemies? The deepest reason for this we cannot put in words, for it lies in the absolute reality of their being, where our enemies are of one nature with us, even of the divine nature. Into this we cannot see, save as into a dark abyss. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

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

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

“ 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.... ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But, in the moment of victory, let the supplicating enemy find us as lovely in mercy, as we are terrible in valor. Our enemies are blind. They neither understand nor desire the happiness of mankind. Ignorant, therefore, as children, they claim our pity for themselves. And as to their widows and little ones, the very thought of them should fill our souls with tenderness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When our enemy is plotting to harm us, to break down our good name, to injure those whom we love, even while we defend ourselves and our dear ones against his malice and meanness, we [Pg 238] must be secretly watching our chances to do him a good turn, and win him from hatred to Love. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies. ”

“ but there is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy. ”

“ Our enemy is not merely spiritual. ”

“ 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; ”

“ Through this man and me hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain. ”

“ It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you. ”

“ It was enemies one wanted, not friends—not Mrs. ”

“ THE ENEMY'S LIFE.—He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in the preservation of the enemy's life. ”

“ “I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. For that only there is no remedy. He who dies, gains; he who sees others die, loses. ”

“ As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. ”

“ “I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to me?”—said her charming, pathetic, dead face. ”

“ For in this respect love is not like war; after the battle is ended we renew the fight with keener ardour, which we never cease to intensify the more thoroughly we are defeated, provided always that we are still in a position to give battle. ”

“ It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another. ”

“ Lucasta he's a Fusilier,
And his pride sends him here.
Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray,
And so decide who started
This bloody war, and who's to pay,
But he must be stout-hearted,
Must sit and stake with quiet breath,
Playing at cards with Death.
Don't plume yourself he fights for you;
It is no courage, love, or hate,
But let us do the things we do;
It's pride that makes the heart be great;
It is not anger, no, nor fear—
Lucasta he's a Fusilier,
And his pride keeps him here. ”

“ Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. ”

“ Of all the evils of war the greatest, in my opinion, is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict, where, if once the blindness of atavistic instincts and the sinister influence of anti-social interests, such as those of armaments with their subservient press, could be overcome, it would be seen that there is a real consonance of interest and essential identity of human nature, and every reason to replace hatred by love. ”

“ That we read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends." ”