Life & Wisdom Quote by William Feather

Kindness, Feather suggests, is less a halo than a magnet - and magnets don’t get to choose what sticks. The line works because it flips the usual moral math. We’re trained to treat kindness as an uncomplicated social good: be nice and you’ll be rewarded with good company. Feather’s sting is that kindness can function like open-door policy, inviting not just gratitude but entitlement, neediness, and opportunism.

The key word is "naturally". He’s not talking about strategic politeness or carefully rationed generosity; he’s describing the person whose default setting is warmth. That kind of person broadcasts availability. In social ecosystems, availability is a resource, and resources attract extractors. The subtext is a warning about boundaries: if you’re habitually accommodating, you’ll end up hosting relationships you didn’t audition for, with people you wouldn’t pick if the interaction weren’t already in motion.

Feather wrote in an era that prized civility and neighborliness as civic virtues, especially in middle-class American life. In that context, the quote reads like a small rebellion against compulsory pleasantness - the pressure to be agreeable even when your instincts say no. It also anticipates a modern vocabulary: emotional labor, people-pleasing, the mismatch between being "nice" and being safe.

The final twist is the quiet cruelty of the phrase "people you don't like". It’s blunt, almost embarrassing to admit. Feather gives permission to say the unsayable: kindness doesn’t cancel preference, and decency doesn’t obligate intimacy.