Try to find out how we agree with others

Find out how we agree with others. Push at it with others.
☆ “Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the devil’s power…At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we differ from other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment we find we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn’t?) then do it; push at it together: you can’t quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it’s all over.” The Genius of John Ruskin, 354

“I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, the fullness of its mercy, and the joy of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did.” The Genius of John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, The Catholic Prayer, 415

☆ Find the spiritual meaning of what you do (John Ruskin)
“Though you are for the most part unconscious of the spiritual meaning of what you say, the instinctive satisfaction you have in saying it is as much a real movement of the spirit within you, as the beating of your heart is a real movement of the body, though you are unconscious of that also, till you put your hand on it. Put your hand also, so to speak, upon the source of the satisfaction with which you use this curse; and ascertain the law of it.” The Genius of John Ruskin, 390
! “All plants are composed of essentially two parts – the leaf and the root – one loving the light, the other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part up, the other for the most part down; and each having faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one which loves the light has, above all things, the purpose of being married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and children’s children of leaves, to make the earth fair for ever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts of honey, and we call them ‘Flowers.’” The Genius of John Ruskin, 366