Quotes about Neighbor

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of the imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you.

But to observe our neighbor's faults with the intention of looking down upon them or of detracting them . . . is sinful.

Divine love is not humanity but neighbor, the concrete, unique individual. You can only ever love individuals, because only individuals ever exist. Classes and collections are abstract objects of thought, not concretely real things. We group people into groups, but real people are concrete individuals.

It occurred to me that I should do more for other people. I never once considered that there were people just down the road who cannot afford proper clothing, or care for their children.

It makes all the difference in the world whether I view my neighbor as a potential convert or as someone whom God already loves.

Legalism lowers, rather than raises, God's standards. Loving your neighbor as yourself, caring for the poor, bringing about justice, forgiving enemies—none of these reduces to a set of rules. Indeed, any list of rules narrows the breadth of what God wants done in the world. It moves the emphasis away from dispensing God's grace to sinners toward a pointless competition with pseudo-saints. It makes faith petty and irrelevant, not something that urgently matters.

Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative. Instead of waiting for his neighbor to make the first move

A man who flatterers his neighbor, spreads a net for his feet

The Publican, in that he was an extortioner, unjust and an adulterer, made it thereby manifest that he did not love his neighbour; and thou by making a god, a saviour, a deliverer, of thy filthy righteousness, dost make it appear, that thou dost not love thy God;

Isn't the fulfillment of our duty towards our neighbor an expression of deepest desire?

The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.