Is "being nice" an overrated virtue?

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Both although women are worse especially in the workplace because they are untouchable.
 
It’s different for men and women, my wife is nice to people and succeeds.
 
Not my experience, at all. When my husband is nice to people he gets much further than he does when he is just neutral.

He even admits it. For him, he has to decide to be overtly nice. It is a choice. He is a nice guy overall, but he isn’t overtly nice to strangers, etc.
 
Certainly being nice and kind is not only a virtue, but failing to do so goes against the second greatest commandment. Loving our neighbors is not an emotion, it is an willful act.
 
Being ‘nice,’ is another adjetive for being charitable, which one of the theological virtues
 
John 13:34-35 - I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is what Jesus taught us, so I don’t think its overrated. 🙂
 
Sometimes even Jesus was very sorrowful and would pull away from others to find another personal place of peace.

It’s called being human and Jesus was human on earth.

Being nice is not the same as humble. A murder can be nice to another person even though he’s just murdered someone moments before.

Sometimes in our deepest moments of pain we are at our most humbleness to others. That humbleness is what Jesus asked us to be.
 
poche said:
Being ‘nice,’ is another adjetive for being charitable, which one of the theological virtues
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For many younger people (under 30?) being nice is equivalent to “not hurting my feelings.” If you say something which is the Truth, and it’s something they don’t agree with, then “you aren’t being nice because what you said hurts my feelings. And oh-by-the way, what you just said is hate speech. Prepare to be sued.”

Of course there may be many ways to speak the Truth, but it seems that to not hurt people’s feelings, it needs to be turned into small “t” not quite the whole Truth / my opinion / gosh I’m really sorry that this might offend you / trigger warning…etc.
 
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It’s not just what you say. It’s how you say it.
A good example is St Hugh of Lincoln. He had problems with the king. The king had promised the Church money and it either didn’t have it or it was being withheld probably out of spite. St Hugh was before the king and the subject of the money that everybody knew about was brought up. Rather than issuing a condemnation or complaining like so many others had done. St Hugh said words to the effect that, “I know that the king is a man of his word, and he will do what he has promised to do.”
 
ricmat said:
For many younger people (under 30?) being nice is equivalent to “not hurting my feelings.”
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Being considerate of other peoples feelings will help as long as it is balanced out.
ricmat said:
“you aren’t being nice because what you said hurts my feelings. And oh-by-the way, what you just said is hate speech. Prepare to be sued.”
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That’s probably not going to happen.
 
I don’t think so. But being nice to the point of letting your voice go unheard, maybe. That’s something that I struggle with quite a bit sometimes, and it can lead to problems in a variety of contexts.
 
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St Faustina said that it is possible to give more by being nice than by giving much materially and being bitter.
 
That’s because an illness is involved and it is an easy problem to avoid anyways.
 
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Bill_B_NY said:
Our American culture tends to value a kind of superficial friendliness. Our Protestant neighbors often excel in offering a friendly demeanor and a smiling countenance.
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This is quite right. American culture has the expectation that people are going to be chipper, cheerful, “shining happy people”, and it disturbs Americans when someone in their midst isn’t a big old ray of sunshine. The Catholic mindset is a bit more, for lack of a better word, “European”. Europeans have no expectation that people are going to be happy and cheerful all the time, and they’re not the least bit put off when someone isn’t. I also get the vibe, in the American South anyway, that there is a fear of “catching someone else’s ‘sad cooties’” — I’ve picked up on it many times. People in the urban centers of the Northeast tend to be more tolerant of variations in the other guy’s demeanor.

As for Protestants, I’ve noticed that too. I have a theory, that since “saved” people just know they are going straight to heaven, with no possible way to lose their salvation, regardless of what sin they might fall into, of course they’re going to be blissfully happy all the time! Wouldn’t you be? I know I would! Among the “blessed assurance of salvation” crowd, there are two schools of thought: (a) if you “backslide” and lose your salvation, then that means you weren’t saved in the first place, and (b) backslide, quit believing, lose your faith, fall into the worst sins imaginable, doesn’t matter — you made that decision, at a given time and place (some of them even write it down), that you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and personal Saviour, and nothing, absolutely nothing, can change that. It doesn’t get more optimistic or pleasant than that. Again, no wonder they’re always in such a good mood…

And then there is the question of “what about when saved people sin?”. Here, too, there are two schools of thought: (a) it doesn’t matter — Jesus took care of it all, all of your sin, past, present, and future, is “on Him”, and your act of faith saved you for all time, or (b) Christians just don’t sin. Lest the latter sound laughable, I have seen it before on a bumper sticker (proof positive! 🤣), and unless I dreamed it, I know I heard a very well-known TV evangelist say on his show one time, “Christians don’t sin”. Where he got that from, I have no earthly idea.
 
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I wish I could “heart” (like) this 100 times instead of just once.
 
We absolutely do not chat in front of the Blessed Sacrament, for the simple reason that we would not have chatted had we been present at calvary when the Lord was crucified.

But after Mass you will find us next door with a glass of wine, or fruit juice for the kids (who form the majority) and I do not think you would find us unfriendly.

What you will find is that we are uncompromising on religious and moral issues. This may be perceived as unfriendly in a world which is accustomed to equate niceness with compromise.
 
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