Kindness Quote by Juliette G. Low

Empathy, here, is framed less as a warm feeling than as disciplined work: "real imagination". Juliette Gordon Low is selling a radical idea in polite packaging. She takes something that reads like a parlor virtue putting yourself in another's place and recasts it as a skill girls can practice, almost like knot-tying or first aid. That shift matters. It makes care actionable, trainable, and communal, not just a private moral posture.

The line is also a subtle intervention in the gender politics of her era. Early 20th-century America offered girls a narrow script: be agreeable, be good, be domestic. Low keeps the socially acceptable vocabulary ("love", "happily") but sneaks in a broader civic ambition. If girls can imagine other lives, they can move beyond the small radius of family and class. "Among others" is doing quiet heavy lifting: it implies diversity, friction, and public life. Loving "among" people isn't the same as loving people in the abstract; it requires navigating difference without retreating into superiority or fear.

Context sharpens the intent. The Girl Scouts emerged during a period obsessed with "character" formation and national cohesion, with immigration and urbanization remaking communities. Low positions the organization as a school for social fluency and mutual regard, not merely refinement. The promise of happiness reads like strategy: compassion is marketed as self-benefit, a compelling pitch to parents and girls alike. Empathy becomes both a moral good and a survival tool for modern life.