QUOTATION: Difficult People

If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Personal Conflict

You clash with the character of one person or another... It has to be that way - you are not a dollar bill to be liked by everyone. Besides without those clashes which arise in dealing with your neighbors, how could you ever lose those sharp corners, the edges - imperfections and defects of your character - and acquire the order, the smoothness, and the firm mildness of charity, of perfection?

If your character and that of those around you were soft and sweet like marshmallows, you would never become a saint.

-- St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Difficult People

People can be “offensive” by what they say or do, in fact by simply being who they are. No matter. God has placed other persons into our lives, with their weaknesses and oddities, with their selfishness and thoughtlessness, with their sometimes crude and even cruel speech and action toward us - among other reasons - in order that we might expiate our sins against God and obtain His merciful love.

--Fr. John Hardon

QUOTATION: Difficult People

Don't say, "That person bothers me." Think: "That person sanctifies me."

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: Difficult People

When we find ourselves in company with quarrelsome, eccentric individuals, people who openly and unblushingly say the most shocking things, difficult to put up with, we should take refuge in silence, and the wisest plan is not to reply to people whose behaviour is so preposterous.

--St. Ambrose of Milan