The best example of my mother’s kindness, is the time she invited our tenant, Paul Goldwater, to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us… she hated the idea of someone spending the holidays alone… my father didn’t want any strangers around, but she insisted.

Later, after we became friends with Paul, he confessed that before she invited him up… he’d been sitting in his apartment, contemplating suicide… and that her invitation lifted him up… and gave him hope… Thinking of her kindness gives me hope, too… and I intend to pass it on…. —- pat

Love consists of two things without which the beauty and charm of all the highest virtues are reduced to nothingness: constancy and sacrifice.
—- Alessandro Manzoni: I Promessi Sposi (1827)