The Quality of Kindness – Sunday, March 06, 1960
We have considered in past weeks some essential qualities of character, including the faith and courage and integrity from which come a quiet conscience. In the recent remarks of an eminent British industrialist, we find some others also added, including the quality of kindliness: “Next I think I would choose kindness in its widest sense. Not, please not, either the hail-fellow-well-met or the do-gooding that too often goes by the name of kindness, but in its real and true sense of active love for one’s fellow men, the sort of kindness that contains within itself generosity of mind and spirit, courtesy, and good temper.”1 This suggests some simple lines by an author whose name we do not know:
“I have wept in the night
For the shortness of sight
That to somebody’s need made, me blind;
But I never have yet
Felt a tinge of regret
For being a little too kind.”2
Everything that is accomplished in life, personally and professionally, publicly, and privately, is affected by personal qualities of character, including the quality of kindliness. Discipline is essential at times. Facts must be faced. But how things are done is often equally important with what is done. How things are said is often equally important with what is said. A comment can be critical and kind, or critical and unkind—constructive—or destructive. Life has its problems for all, its days of discouragement, its sorrows, its difficulties, and disappointments; but much bitterness and heartbreak can be softened by the quality of kindliness, which includes sincere consideration, and which excludes cruel or cutting sarcasm, ridicule, and every intent to embarrass, to insult, to degrade. Kindness should be cultivated in all relationships of life; between parents and children; between brothers and sisters; teachers and students; neighbor to neighbor and every man to every other. The quality of kindliness is in part the essence of the message of the Master of mankind, with love and peace and respect for people. And now we close this comment with these words from a hymn on the quality of kindliness:
“O the kind words we give shall in memory live
And sunshine forever impart;
Let us oft speak kind words to each other;
Kind words are sweet tones of the heart.”3
1Air Commodore W. C, Cooper, Character and its Place in Industry, Rotary, R.I.B.I. Vol. 2. No. 24
2Anonymous
3Joseph L. Townsend
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the CBS Radio Network, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, March 6, 1960, 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1960
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March 06, 1960
Broadcast Number 1,594