d the womanliest. An apology,
like chivalry, is sexless. Perhaps because it is a natural virtue of
women, it sits manlier upon men than upon women.

... "It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown."

Even as chivalry, being a natural attribute of men, becomes beautiful
beyond words to express when found in women.

I have often heard men say they never apologize. Sometimes I have
heard women. Pitiful, indeed, it becomes then. A woman without
religion is no more repulsive to me than one who "never apologizes."
How I pity the people who love those men and women who "never
apologize." A delicate apology brings into play all the virtues
necessary to a perfect humanity. The proudest are generally those who
can bend the lowest. It is not pride; it is a stupid vanity and an
abnormal self-love which prevent a man or woman from apologizing. An
apology requires a native humility of which only great souls are
capable. It requires generosity to be willing to humble yourself. It
takes faith in humanity to think that your apology will be accepted.
You must have a sense of justice to believe that you owe it. It
requires sincerity to make it sound honest, and tact to do it at the
right time. It requires patience to stick to it until the wound has
ceased to bleed, and the best, highest, truest type of love to make
you want to do it.

There is only one thing meaner than a person who never apologizes, and
that is a person who will not accept one.

It requires a finer type of generosity to receive generously than to
give generously. And a nature is more divine which can forgive
honestly and quickly than one which can only apologize and is not
capable of a swift forgiveness. But it is a wise dispensation of
Providence that the two are twin virtues, and are generally to be met
with in the same broad and beautiful nature.

Used against a high soul, there is no surer method of humiliation than
an apology. In one skilled at reading human nature, an apology becomes
a weapon. When you are not the one who should apologize first, when
you are less to blame than he, be you the one to apologize first, and
see how quickly his noble nature will abase itself, and rush to meet
you, and how sure and glorious and complete the reconciliation will
be!

I never can blame people who refuse to accept an apology in the shape
of flowers when the wound has been given in words. The whole of Europe
would not compensat