Relationships—It’s Not About You

“When I was young, I worried about what people thought of me. As I grew older, I didn’t care what people thought of me. Now I have finally realized that people were never thinking of me. They were too worried about what other people were thinking of them.”
—Old Joke

“Beginning today, extend to everyone you meet all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”
—Og Mandino

Senator: “Mr. President, I believe that our enemies should be destroyed.”
President Lincoln: “I agree with you sir, and the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Treat every person with kindness and respect, even those who are rude to you. Remember that you show compassion to others not because of who they are but because of who you are.”
—Andrew T. Somers

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
—Leo Buscaglia

“We ask the leaf, ‘Are you complete in yourself?’ And the leaf answers, ‘No, my life is in the branches.’ We ask the branch, and the branch answers, ‘No my life is in the root.’ We ask the root, and it answers, ‘No, my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die.’ So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.”
—Harry Emerson Fosdick