It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not “what he ought to be.” If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we do away with him altogether.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]

“Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”