Topic
Kindness in this collection is most memorably described by those who learned it from unlikely sources. Gibran's having learned kindness from the unkind — and being ungrateful to that teacher — is the most psychologically complex entry: the unkind are instructors in the negative, and the lesson is not gratitude but observation. Aesop's no-act-of-kindness-ever-wasted is the economic statement: kindness always returns something, though rarely in the form or to the person that gave it. Jefferson on concentrated love — a great deal given to a few being better than a little to many — applies the same principle to attachment: depth over breadth. Shakespeare on loving all, trusting few, and doing wrong to none separates the three capacities: kindness can extend to everyone, but it takes a different form at different distances. Proust on illness being the doctor we pay most heed to while making promises only to kindness and knowledge is the most precise account of human priorities: we respond to pain faster than to virtue.
The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.
A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles.