Kind Thoughts - Fr Faber

Fr Faber's spirtual conference, Kindness, can be read online here, and it is full of wisdom that should revolutionise the way we think, speak, and act.

... Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or kind deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they imply also a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still. Active-minded men are naturally the most given to criticise, and they are also the men whose thoughts are generally the most exuberant. Such men, therefore, must make kind thoughts a defence against self. By sweetening the fountain of their thoughts they will destroy the bitterness of their judgments.

But kind thoughts imply also a contact with God, and a Divine ideal in our minds. Their origin cannot be anything short of Divine. Like the love of beauty, they can spring from no baser source. They are not dictated by self-interest nor stimulated by passion. They have nothing in them which is insidious, and they are almost always the preludes to some sacrifice of self. It must be from God's touch that such waters spring...