“Here lies a great man,” and “a gentle soul,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said of the 41^st president Monday. “His legacy is grace perfected.”

In a recent essay, former President Clinton said of George Herbert Walker Bush, “I just loved him.”

The former president’s death sparked a spirit this week rarely shared across the political divide in Washington and around our country nowadays: Mutual respect. Let’s hope it lingers.

U.S. Nancy Pelosi, who’ll return to the House speakership when the Democrats take over the lower chamber next month, hugged former President George W. Bush, son of the former president at the Rotunda. She walked away dabbing her eyes.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the combative Senate majority leader, placed a wreath by President Bush’s remains.

There was something about the self-effacing Bush — it is an apparent goodness shared by his family — that can encourage Americans to show their better natures. That’s why former President Barack Obama visited the 41^st president shortly before his death. It’s why Michelle Obama treasures the friendship she shares with the Bush family, including the man her husband replaced as president.

Maybe it’s recognition for our shared American heritage, a belief in our common political system, a respect for the best intentions of the other side, empathy for others who have walked the halls of high government office and carried the responsibility that entails.

Americans came to respect the elder Bush not for his soaring rhetoric — he had to work hard to become an effective speaker — but for his self-deprecating humor, the small kindnesses he extended to others, the uncommon decency he commonly displayed, his good will expressed toward friends and political adversaries alike.

The Associated Press wrote this week that “political combatants set aside their fights to honor a Republican who led in a less toxic time and at times found commonality with Democrats despite sharp policy disagreements.” But were those times less toxic because national leaders like George Bush made them more congenial? Yes, they were.

Clinton, who waged a hard-fought, sometimes acrimonious political campaign against Bush, recalled the contents of a note that his predecessor left behind for him in the Oval Office on the day he left the White House.

“You will be our president when you read this,” Bush wrote, underlining the word our. “I wish you well. I wish your family well.”

Would that we all could promote such common purpose.

“Your success now is our country’s success,” he added. “I am rooting hard for you.”

The best way Americans can show lasting respect for the former president is to embrace that spirit of charity toward others, to forgive perceived slights, to love one another a little more generously, despite our differences.

It’s not grace perfected. But it’s a start.