Quotes about Enemies

Do you not know that the largest trees, which have required years to grow, are cut down in one hour? It is foolish to look for their fruits and yet to be unprepared for their fall. Let it be your consolation, then, that God's enemies, however honorable and exalted they may have been, shall nevertheless fade away like the smoke.

When he [Christ] says 'Forgive your enemies', it is not for the sake of the enemy but for one's own sake that he says so, and because Love is more beautiful than Hate.

To cultivate a mental attitude that will bring you peace and happiness, remember that Rule 2 is: Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.

Let's love ourselves so much that we won't permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health, and our looks

Even if we can't love our enemies, let's at least love ourselves. Let's love ourselves so much that we won't permit our enemies to control our happiness, our health and our looks. As Shakespeare put it: Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself.

It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can't do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.

I was glad enough that I had not become a preacher, and so would not have to go through a war pretending that Jesus had not told us to love our enemies.

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.

We need to understand that we are not each others' enemies in this country. And it is only the political class that derives its power by creating friction. It is only the media that derives its importance by creating friction... that uses every little thing to create this chasm between people. This is not who we are.

Jesus told us that anyone can love a friend. Even the unbelievers do so, even the Romans. But we as believers are called to love our enemies." He paused and stared down at the floor. "I left that meeting a broken man.

Here we sit. Sinners bound together by the impossible command to love our enemies.

It is certainly a greater and more wonderful work to change the minds of enemies, bringing about a change of soul, than to kill them.