"I become more and more certain, as the years go by, that wherever friendship is destroyed,

or homes are broken,

or precious ties are severed,

there is a failure of imagination.

Someone is too intent on justifying himself, or herself, never venturing out to imagine the way things seem to the other person.

Imagination is shut off and sympathy dies.

If we know what it is that makes other people speak or act as they do,

if we knew it vividly by carefully imagining all that may lie behind it, we might not quarrel.

We might understand.

Often we could heal the wounds.

But even where that is not possible - even where fuller understanding only leaves us rather sad and helpless, it would still give us the power to be kind - to act yes, but still to be kind - to go on being kind.

And in a harsh world, God knows that even that is something - to go on being kind.

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)