There are times and circumstances when, for most of us anyway physical violence seems it cannot be avoided. But there should never be times when it has to spill over into the mental violence of hate - though that's pretty difficult, in our saner moments we most of know that giving in to that is to take in a kind of poison.

Here's a quote I really like, and it's not from Gandhi, it's from an Italian writer Giovanni Guareschi, who wrote the Don Camillo stories, and it's about being caught up in the last war as a soldier (except of course it wasn't "the last war"):

"I had no more influence [on the War] than a nutshell tossed about on the ocean, and I emerged without ribbons or medals on my chest. I emerged as a victor, however, because I came through the cataclysm without hatred in my soul..."

I came across this quote in the course of chasing up a song he wrote in a thread up the music end of the Mudcat - and making an Englished version of it.