judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they
judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

Let not familiarity swallow up old courtesy. Many of us have a habit of
saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers
behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is
of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You
may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly to your associates,
but not less courteously than to strangers.

--_Helps._

* * * * *

Much of the sorrow of life springs from the accumulation, day by day and
year by year, of little trials--a letter written in less than courteous
terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the
day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an
unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism
needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea,
the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your
circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class
are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of
them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain
of kindliness. Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our
censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pin pricks in
conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all
evidences of an ill-conditioned nature.

--_John Watson._