Everything, except true love, is an illusion. If a friend behaves coldly, rudely, spitefully, insolently to you, say — this is an illusion of the enemy, if a feeling of enmity, arising from your friend’s coldness and insolence, disturbs you, say: — this is an illusion of mine; but the truth is, that I love my friend, in spite of everything, and I do not wish to see evil in him, which is an illusion of the demon, and which is in me also; I will be indulgent to his faults, for they are in me also; we have — the same sinful nature. You say that your friend has sins and great defects? So have you. — You say, that you do not love him because of such and such sins and defects. Then do not love yourself either, because you have the same sins and defects as he has.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
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