We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.
Interpretation
Love for one another is essential, but personal liking is not mandatory.
This quote by Peter De Vries suggests that while it is important to love one another as human beings, there is no obligation to necessarily like everyone. The recognition of shared humanity can lead to complex emotions such as rivalry and enmity, highlighting the difference between universal love and personal affinity or friendship.
In practice
During a team-building workshop, to illustrate the importance of collaboration despite personal differences.
I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
There are times when parenthood seems nothing more than feeding the hand that bites you.
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.
As soon as a man and woman of almost any age are alone together within four walls it is assumed that anything may happen. Spontaneous combustion, instant fornication, triumph of the senses. What possibilities men and women must see in each other to infer such dangers. Or, believing in the dangers, how often they must think about the possibilities.
You know we fixate on the food so much itself: “Oh, the ultimate brownie or the ultimate this or that” -- well, let me tell you something: It’s all poop in about 12 hours, okay? The real power that food has is its ability to connect human beings to each other -- that’s the stuff right there and, to me, everything else is secondary to that.
Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up and get up with dignity, to begin anew.
Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
The fact that 98 percent of women in [the U.S.] who are sexually experienced say they use birth control doesn't make sex any less sacred. It just means that they're getting to make choices about their lives.
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