Charity

“Asking people to do good, to give, to be charitable, becomes easy in these kinds of societies; asking them to be neighbors with those they most wish to help is not, since it points out an inconvenient truth that most of us try hard to forget all the time: some of us have worked hard to make sure we are only neighbors with certain kinds of people, and now we have to live with the results.”
― D.L. Mayfield, The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

“To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him;”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“We think of a prospective spouse as primarily a lover (or a provider), and if he or she can be a friend on top of that, well isn’t that nice! We should be going at it the other way around. Screen first for friendship. Look for someone who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them. And then explore whether that friendship could become a romance and a marriage. So many people go about their dating starting from the wrong end, and they end up in marriages that aren’t really about anything and aren’t going anywhere.”
― Timothy J. Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

“William Langland, writing around 1400, said, ‘And all the wickedness in the world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, An Acceptable Time