BishopTemple.
"The strength of a man's virtue is not to be measured by the efforts he makes under pressure, but by his ordinary conduct."
Pascal.
Sins of the Spirit
MAY 27
"We must remember that it is by the mercy of Christ that we are saved from being what we might have been. 'There goes John Bradford, but for the grace of God,' said a good man when he saw a criminal being led to execution. We are too apt to take the credit to ourselves for our circumstances. Imagine that you were born of poor parents out of work in Whitechapel, and had to pick up your living in the docks, or that you were a working girl in Bethnal Green, trying to keep your poor parents or nurse a sick brother out of making match-boxes at 2¼d. a gross, and then thank God you were spared the temptation to a bad life, which they have to undergo. So, again, we must remember that sins of the spirit are quite as bad in the eyes of Christ as sins of the flesh; He never spoke a hard word of the publican and sinner, but He lashed with His scorn the 'Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.' The sins that we respectable people commit lightly every day, of pride and indolence and indifference to the sufferings of the poor, may be worse in His sight than the most flagrant sins of those who know no better."
Friends of the Master, BishopWinnington Ingram.
Sin
MAY 28
"I have often observed in the course of my experience of human life, that every man, even the worst, has something good about him; though often nothing else than a happy temperament of constitution, inclining him to this or that virtue. For this reason, no man can say in what degree any other person besides himself can be, with strict justice, called wicked. Let any one with the strictest character for regularity of conduct among us, examine impartially how many vices he has never been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but for want of opportunity, or some accidental circumstances intervening; how many of the weaknesses of mankind he has escaped because he was out of the line of such temptation; and—what often, if not always, weighs more than all the rest—how much he is indebted to the world's good opinion because the world does not know all: I say, any man who can thus think will scan the failings, nay, the faults and crimes of mankind with a brother's eye."
Burns.
"Very late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness of sin."
An Unhappy Girl,Ivan Turgenev.
Sin
MAY 29
"Remove from us the protection, the encompassing safeguards and shelters we enjoy; withdraw the influences for good that are daily and weekly dropped on us like gentle dew from heaven, and have dropped ever since we had any being; deprive us of the comforts and interests, the innocent substitutes for forbidden pleasures; expose us to the loneliness, the vacancy, the dreary monotony, the hopeless struggle, the despair in which the majority of the men and women who fall find themselves immersed; and bring before us, thus exposed and bereft, what temptation you will—uncleanness, intemperance, theft, lying, blasphemy—and not one in ten of ordinary Christian people, I believe, would stand before it."
R. W. Barbour.
"Looking within myself, I note how thinA plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;—In my own heart I find the worst man's mate,And see not dimly the smooth-hingëd gateThat opes to those abyssesWhere ye grope darkly,—ye who never knewOn your young hearts love's consecrating dewOr felt a mother's kisses,Or home's restraining tendrils round you curled;Ah, side by side with heart's-ease in this world,The fatal night-shade grows and bitter rue!"
James Russell Lowell.
Conscience
MAY 30
"Conscience is harder than our enemies,Knows more, accuses with more nicety,Nor needs to question Rumour if we fallBelow the perfect model of our thought."
George Eliot.
"If a man has nothing to reproach himself with, he can bear anything."
Phillips Brooks.
"Character is the ground of trust and the guarantee for good living, and that character only is sound which rests upon a good conscience and a clean heart and a strong will."
Dr.John Watson.
Repentance
MAY 31
"What is true contrition? Sorrow for sin in itself, not for sin's consequences."
The Guided Life, CanonBody.
"Remorse and repentance are two very different things. Repentance leads back to life; but remorse ends often in the painless apathy and fatal mortification of despair."
DeanFarrar.
"Penitence is like the dawn.... It is the breaking of the light in the soul,—dark enough sometimes no doubt, but a darkness giving place steadily to the growing light."
BishopWalsham How.
Heredity
JUNE 1
"The father says of his profligate son whom he has never done one wise or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: 'I cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world and this came out.' The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, 'Make us noble,' it does make us noble. If we say to it, 'Make us mean,' it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility and say, 'Behold, how noble I have made myself.' And we take the meanness and say, 'See how mean the world has made me.'"
Phillips Brooks.
"Speaking of ancestors—'What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring them forward in my life as being responsible for my nature? If I roll back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had not their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon those who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all, and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"
The Mettle of the Pasture,James Lane Allen.
Heredity
JUNE 2
"This tracing of the sin to its root now suggests this further topic—its cure. Christianity professes to cure anything. The process may be slow, the discipline may be severe, but it can be done. But is not temper a constitutional thing? Is it not hereditary, a family failing, a matter of temperament, and canthatbe cured? Yes, if there is anything in Christianity. If there is no provision for that, then Christianity stands convicted of being unequal to human need. What course then did the father take, in the case before us, to pacify the angry passions of his ill-natured son? Mark that he made no attempt in the first instance to reason with him! To do so is a common mistake, and utterly useless both with ourselves and others. We are perfectly convinced of the puerility of it all, but that does not help us in the least to mend it. The malady has its seat in the affections, and therefore the father went there at once. Reason came in its place, and the son was supplied with valid arguments—stated in the last verse of the chapter—against his conduct, but he was first plied with love."
The Ideal Life,Henry Drummond.
Heredity
JUNE 3
"Any insistence on heredity would have depreciated responsibility, and Jesus held every man to his own sin. Science and theology have joined hands in magnifying heredity and lowering individuality, till a man comes to be little more than the resultant of certain forces, a projectile shot forth from the past, and describing a calculated course. Jesus made a brave stand for each man as the possessor of will-power, and master of his life. He sadly admitted that a human will might be weakened by evil habits of thought, He declared gladly that the Divine Grace reinforced the halting will: but, with every qualification, decision still rested in the last issue with the man. 'If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean,' as if his cure hinged on the Divine Will. Of course, I am willing, said Jesus, and referred the man back to his inalienable human rights. Jesus never diverged into metaphysics, even to reconcile the freedom of the human will with the sovereignty of the Divine. His function was not academic debate, it was the solution of an actual situation. Logically, men might be puppets; consciously, they were self-determinating, and Jesus said with emphasis, 'Wilt thou?'"
The Mind of the Master, Dr.John Watson.
"Even natural disposition, of which we make so much when we speak of heredity, is only a tendency till habit takes it and sets it and hardens it and drives it to a settled goal."
Hugh Black.
Bearing Criticism
JUNE 4
"When people detect in us what are actually imperfections and faults, it is clear that they do us no wrong, since it is not they who cause them; and it is clear, too, that they do us a service, inasmuch as they help us to free ourselves from an evil, namely, the ignorance of these defects. We should not be angry because they know them and despise us, for it is right that they should know us for what we are, and that they should despise us if we are despicable.
"Such are the feelings which would rise in a heart filled with equity and justice. What then should we say of our own heart when we see in it a quite contrary frame of mind? For is it not a fact that we hate the truth and those who tell it us, that we love those who deceive themselves in our favour, and that we wish to be esteemed by them as other than we really are?"
Pascal.
"A man should never be ashamed to say he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday."
Pope.
Faults
JUNE 5
"Too many take the ready course to deceive themselves; for they look with both eyes on the failings and defects of others, and scarcely give their good qualities half an eye: on the contrary, in themselves they study to the full their own advantages, while their weaknesses and defects (as one says) they skip over, as children do the hard words in their lessons that are troublesome to read; and making this uneven parallel, what wonder if the result be a gross mistake of themselves."
ArchbishopLeighton.
"To hide a fault with a lie is to replace a blot by a hole."
"It is a great folly not to part with your own faults, which is possible, but to try instead to escape from other people's faults, which is impossible."
Marcus Aurelius.
"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
Carlyle.
Obstinacy
JUNE 6
"Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity of reason or conscience."
Amiel's Journal.
"If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance."
Marcus Aurelius.
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."
Thoreau.
"When one's character is naturally firm, it is well to be able to yield upon reflection."
Vauvenargues.
Calumny
JUNE 7
"Any man of many transactions can hardly expect to go through life without being subject to one or two very severe calumnies. Amongst these many transactions, some few will be with very ill-conditioned people, with very ignorant people, or, perhaps, with monomaniacs; and he cannot expect, therefore, but that some narrative of a calumnious kind will have its origin in one of these transactions. It may be fanned by any accidental breeze of malice or ill-fortune, and become a very serious element of mischief to him. Such a thing is to be looked upon as pure misfortune coming in the ordinary course of events; and the way to treat it is to deal with it as calmly and philosophically as with any other misfortune. As some one has said, the mud will rub off when it is dry, and not before. The drying will not always come in the calumniated man's time, unless in favourable seasons, which he cannot command."
Helps.
"If any one tells you such a one has spoken ill of you, do not refute them in that particular; but answer, had he known all my vices, he had not spoken only of that one."
Epictetus.
Calumny
JUNE 8
"I am beholden to calumny that she hath so endeavoured and taken pains to belie me. It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch upon my actions."
Ben Jonson.
"As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it."
George Eliot.
"The power men possess to annoy me I give them."
Emerson.
"Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was—a blameless life."
Cowper.
Flattery
JUNE 9
"Flattery is a false coinage which would have no currency but for our vanity."
La Rochefoucauld.
"If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could do us no harm."
La Rochefoucauld.
"Self-love is the greatest Flatterer in the World."
La Rochefoucauld.
"The Devil has no stauncher ally than want of perception."
Philip H. Wickstead.
Pride
JUNE 10
"There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of self-approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably at its purest in the last."
Amiel's Journal.
"The foundation of pride is the wish to respect one's self, whatever others may think; the mainspring of vanity is the craving for the admiration of others, no matter at what cost to one's self-respect."
The Heart of Rome,F. Marion Crawford.
"Any revelation of greatness overwhelms petty thoughts.... The presence of death turns enemies into friends. In the same way the petty feelings of pride and vanity would lose much of their power if people had the overwhelming feeling which comes from the contemplation of Almightiness, All-goodness, and All-love. There would be a marked change in all human relations if men turned from the presence of the Thrice Holy to face one another; if thoughts of self and for self were driven out of their minds by worship."
The Service of God, CanonBarnett.
Conceit
JUNE 11
"It is indeed a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."
Plutarch.
"Conceit spoils many an excellency. Some persons are so proud of their goodness, or of their attainments, or of their position, or of their character, or of their family, that they become offensive to many who would otherwise be won by their merit. Pride mars, blights, and withers whatever it touches. It begets assumptions that are very belittling as well as hard to bear. A man weakens his influence and retards his personal and public interests by giving it full control. Its exhibition may be natural; but noble manhood, high moral character, regard to the feelings of others and Christianity all demand its suppression."
Humility
JUNE 12
"What hypocrites we seem to be, whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud."
Guesses at Truth, edited by ArchdeaconHare.
"By despising himself too much a man comes to be worthy of his own contempt."
Amiel's Journal.
"Just as criticism alone ministers to pride and then to death, so creation, even of the smallest kind, ministers to humility. And that stands to reason: the slightest act of shaping instantly opens before you an ever-expanding sea, and the vision of the infinite is the death of vanity and pride."
The Gospel of Joy,Stopford Brooke.
"Humility is the hall-mark of wisdom."
Jeremy Collier.
Egotism
JUNE 13
"We ought to have this measure of charity for egotistical people—a willingness to suppose that they actually believe themselves to be what they assume to be. It is quite possible for a person to be in such a fog of misapprehension that everything about him—his little world, his personal interest—will loom abnormally large. When the fog is dispelled, he will see things as they are, and estimate them and himself accordingly.
"Egotism of this kind is pardonable; and there is a great deal of it which is peculiar to the mists and strange refractions of youth. When the sun of a clearer and larger knowledge chases away the fog, a right-minded young person emerges from this egotistical, too self-conscious period of his life, and finds a new adjustment for himself in the great and serious world."
"He who is always enquiring what people will say, will never give them opportunity to say anything great about him."
"Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out; but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit."
Lowell.
The Code of Society
JUNE 14
"'Freedom' is not the power to do what we like, but to be what we ought to be."
Charles Gore.
"There is no commoner danger than that of accepting the code of the society in which you live as the rule of right."
BishopTemple.
"Strive all your life to free men from the bondage of custom and self, the two great elements of the world that lieth in wickedness."
Charles Kingsley.
"What Imustdo is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule ... is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better thanyouknow it."
Emerson.
Public Opinion
JUNE 15
"It is not the many who reform the world; but the few who rise superior to that Public Opinion which crucified our Lord many years ago."
Charles Kingsley.
"We are tempted to measure ourselves by others, to acquiesce in an average standard and an average attainment. We forget that while we are not required to judge our neighbours, we are required to judge ourselves."
BishopWestcott.
"Moral courage is obeying one's conscience, and doing what one believes to be right in face of a hostile majority; and moral cowardice is stifling one's conscience, and doing what is less than right to win other people's favour."
Dr.John Watson.
Public Opinion
JUNE 16
"Opinion has its value and even its power: to have it against us is painful when we are among friends, and harmful in the case of the outer world. We should neither flatter opinion nor court it; but it is better, if we can help it, not to throw it on to a false scent. The first error is a meanness; the second an imprudence.... Be careful of your reputation, not through vanity, but that you may not harm your life's work, and out of love for truth. There is still something of self-seeking in the refined disinterestedness which will not justify itself, that it may feel itself superior to opinion. It requires ability to make what we seem agree with what we are,—and humility to feel that we are no great things."
Amiel's Journal.
"Suppose any man shall despise me. Let him look to that himself. But I will look to this, that I be not discovered doing or saying anything deserving of contempt."
Marcus Aurelius.
Spiritual Balance and Proportion
JUNE 17
"A well-governed mind learns in time to find pleasure in nothing but the true and the just."
Amiel's Journal.
"Not only does sympathy lead us to see the opinions of others in a truer light, it enables us to form a sounder judgment on our own; for as long as a man looks only 'on his own things,' he fails to see them in true proportion."
Lucy Soulsby.
"If we can live in Christ and have His life in us, shall not the spiritual balance and proportion which were His become ours too? If He were really our Master and our Saviour, could it be that we should get so eager and excited over little things? If we were His, could we possibly be wretched over the losing of a little money which we do not need, or be exalted at the sound of a little praise which we know that we only half deserve and that the praisers only half intend? A moment's disappointment, a moment's gratification, and then the ocean would be calm again and quite forgetful of the ripple which disturbed its bosom."
Phillips Brooks.
Temperance
JUNE 18
"(Of Training...) its aim must be to bring into human character more of that unity, consistency, harmony, proportion, upon which the Greek philosophers were never weary of insisting as the essence of virtue."
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
"Temperance.—The original term describes that sovereign self-mastery, that perfect self-control, in which the mysterious will of man holds in harmonious subjection all the passions and faculties of his nature.
"Self-will is to mind what self-indulgence is to sense, the usurpation by a part of that which belongs to the whole.
"In Knowledge temperance.—The Apostle counsels temperance, the just and proportionate use of every faculty and gift, and not the abolition or abandonment of any.
"It is easier in many cases to pluck out the right eye or to cut off the right hand than to discipline and employ them."
BishopWestcott.
Balance
JUNE 19
"Temperance is reason's girdle and passion's bridle."
Jeremy Taylor.
"Be wary and keep cool. A cool head is as necessary as a warm heart. In any negotiations, steadiness and coolness are invaluable; while they will often carry you in safety through times of danger and difficulty."
LordAvebury.
"Place a guard over your strong points! Thrift may run into niggardliness, generosity into prodigality or shiftlessness. Gentleness may become pusillanimity, tact become insincerity, power become oppression. Characters need sentries at their points of weakness, true enough, but often the points of greatest strength are, paradoxically, really points of weakness."
Balance
JUNE 20
"Culture implies all which gives a mind possession of its powers."
Emerson.
"There are very, very few from whom we get that higher, deeper, broader help which it is the prerogative of true excellence in judgment to bestow: help to discern, through the haste and insistence of the present, what is its real meaning and its just demand; help to give due weight to what is reasonable, however unreasonably it may be stated or defended; help to reverence alike the sacredness of a great cause and the sacredness of each individual life, to adjust the claims of general rules and special equity; help to carry with one conscientiously, on the journey towards decision, all the various thoughts that ought to tell upon the issue; help to keep consistency from hardening to obstinacy, and common sense from sinking into time-serving; help to think out one's duty as in a still, pure air, sensitive to all true signs and voices of this world, and yet unshaken by its storms."
Studies in the Christian Character, BishopPaget.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 21
"We are all inclined to judge of others as we find them. Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which the character affects our own interests and passions. We find it difficult to think well of those by whom we are thwarted or depressed, and we are ready to admit every excuse for the vices of those who are useful or agreeable to us."
Macaulay.
"To judge is to see clearly, to care for what is just, and therefore to be impartial,—more exactly, to be disinterested,—more exactly still, to be impersonal."
Amiel's Journal.
"Of all human faculties there is none which more enriches our lives than a sound moral judgment. Genius is rarer and more wonderful. But this surpasses even genius in the fact that it is not only in itself a virtue, but the fruitful mother of virtues. It is as Aristotle said, 'Given a sound judgment and all the virtues will follow in its train.'
. . . . . . . . .
"If the moral judgment is to be sound it must presuppose character, faculty to deliberate, and enlightenment."
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 22
"That is a penetrating sarcasm of George Eliot's in 'Amos Barton': 'It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.' Everybody needs the suggestion that is embodied in the above remark. Our judgments of men are always more or less defective. But it is the man who prides himself on his outspokenness, the man who thinks it would be cowardice to withhold an opinion of men and things, particularly if he is charged with the duty of public utterance, that needs to learn that blue or brown or green is not black, and that in nothing is so much discrimination needed as in the diagnosis of character."
"Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another."
Richter.
Sound Judgment
JUNE 23
"It hardly can seem strange that excellence in judgment is thus rare if we go on to think of the manifold discipline that it needs.
"For we cannot deny that even physical conditions tend at least to tell on it; and most of us may have to own that there are days on which we know that we had better distrust the view we take of things. It is good counsel that a man should, if he has the chance, reconsider after his holiday any important decision that he was inclined to make just before it; that he should appeal from his tired to his refreshed self; and men need to deal strictly with the body, and to bring it into subjection, not only lest its appetites grow riotous, but also lest it trouble, with moods and miseries of its own, the exercise of judgment.
"And then, with the calmness of sound health, or the control that a strong and vigilant will can sometimes gain over the encroachments of health that is not sound, there must also be the insight and resourcefulness of learning; that power to recognise, and weigh, and measure, and forecast, which comes of long watching how things move; the power that grows by constant thoughtfulness in study or in life; the distinctive ability of those who, in Hooker's phrase, are 'diligent observers of circumstances, the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly.'"
Studies in the Christian Character, BishopPaget.
Harsh Judgment
JUNE 24
"How often we judge unjustly when we judge harshly. The fret and temper we despise may have its rise in the agony of some great unsuspected self-sacrifice, or in the endurance of unavowed, almost intolerable pain. Whoso judges harshly is sure to judge amiss."
Christina Rossetti.
"We meet and mingle, we mark men's speech;We judge by a word or a fancied slight;We give our fellows a mere glance each,Then brand them for ever black or white."Meanwhile God's patience is o'er us all,He probes for motives, He waits for years;No moment with Him is mean or small,And His scales are turned by the weight of tears."
Judging
JUNE 25
"Perhaps it were better for most of us to complain less of being misunderstood, and to take more care that we do not misunderstand other people. It ought to give us pause at a time to remember that each one has a stock of cut-and-dry judgments on his neighbours, and that the chances are that most of them are quite erroneous. What our neighbour really is we may never know, but we may be pretty certain that he is not what we have imagined, and that many things we have thought of him are quite beside the mark. What he does we have seen, but we have no idea what may have been his thoughts and intentions. The mere surface of his character may be exposed, but of the complexity within we have not the faintest idea. People crammed with self-consciousness and self-conceit are often praised as humble, while shy and reserved people are judged to be proud. Some whose whole life is one subtle studied selfishness get the name of self-sacrifice, and other silent heroic souls are condemned for want of humanity."
The Potter's Wheel, Dr.John Watson.
"To weigh other minds by our own is the false scale by which the greater number of us miscalculate all human actions and most human characters."
John Oliver Hobbes.
Biassed Judgments
JUNE 26
"How difficult it is to submit anything to the opinion of another person without perverting his judgment by the way in which we put the matter to him. If one says, 'For my part I think it beautiful,' or 'I think it obscure,' or the like, one inclines the hearer's imagination to that opinion, or incites it to take the contrary view."
Pascal.
"Human speech conveys different meanings to differently biassed minds."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"We judge of others by what we see in them: and, what is more perilous still, we are tempted to judge of ourselves by what others can see in us."
BishopWestcott.
Judging
JUNE 27
"The sinner's own fault? So it was.If every own fault found us out,Dogged us and hedged us round about,What comfort should we take becauseNot half our due we thus wrung out?"Clearly his own fault. Yet I thinkMy fault in part, who did not prayBut lagged and would not lead the way.I, haply, proved his missing link.God help us both to mind and pray."
Christina G. Rossetti.
"She had the clear judicial mind which must inevitably see the tragic pitifulness of things. She had thought too much to be able to indulge in the primitive luxury of unqualified condemnation."
In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim,Mrs.Hodgson Burnett.
"She was one of those lowly women who apply the severity born of their creed to themselves, and spend only the love born of the indwelling Spirit upon their neighbour."
G. MacDonald.
Justice and Mercy
JUNE 28
"It is not even, amongst men, the best and purest who are found to be the severest censors and judges of others. Quickness to detect and expose the weakness and frailties of a fellow-man, harshness in condemning them, mercilessness in punishing them, are not the characteristics which experience would lead us to expect in a very high and noble nature.... To be gentle, pitying, forbearing to the fallen, to be averse to see or hear of human faults and vices, and when it is impossible not to see them to be pained and grieved by them, to be considerate of every extenuating circumstance that will mitigate their culpability, to delight in the detection of some redeeming excellence even in the vilest.... Is not all this the sort of conduct which, as experience teaches us, betokens, not moral apathy or indifference, but the nature which is purest and most elevated beyond all personal sympathy with vice.... If, then, human goodness is the more merciful in proportion as it approaches nearer to perfection ... might we not conclude that when goodness becomes absolutely perfect, just then will mercy reach its climax and become absolutely unlimited?"
PrincipalCaird.
"Search thine own heart. What paineth theeIn others, in thyself may be;All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;Be thou the true man thou dost seek."
Whittier.
Judging
JUNE 29
"It is my way when I observe any instance of folly, any queer or absurd illusion, straightway to look for something of the same type in myself, feeling sure that amid all differences there will be a certain correspondence; just as there is more or less correspondence in the natural history even of continents widely apart, and of islands in opposite zones....
"Introspection which starts with the purpose of finding out one's own absurdities is not likely to be very mischievous, yet of course it is not free from dangers any more than breathing is, or the other functions that keep us alive or active. To judge of others by oneself is in its most innocent meaning the briefest expression for our only method of knowing mankind; yet, we perceive, it has come to mean in many cases either the vulgar mistake which reduces every man's value to the very low figure at which the valuer himself happens to stand; or else, the amiable illusion of the higher nature misled by a too generous construction of the lower. One cannot give a recipe for wise judgment: it resembles appropriate muscular action, which is attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give."
George Eliot.
Contemptuousness
JUNE 30
"Our Lord not onlytoldmen that they were the children of God, that they should strive after their Father's likeness, and that they might approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what was more than this, in every word He spake,—whether of teaching, or reproof, or expostulation, or in His passing words to those who received His mercies,—Hetreatedthem as God's children. Man, as man, has in His eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy, and at the Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord's words or looks do we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He show contempt. The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but there is no such thing as rabble in our Lord's eyes. The master, in the parable, asks concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting the soil, why cumbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till all has been tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims, for all that exists is the Father's."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"Tennyson was very grand on contemptuousness. It was, he said, a sure sign of intellectual littleness. Simply to despise, nearly always meant not to understand. Pride and contempt were specially characteristic of barbarians. Real civilisation taught human beings to understand each other better, and must therefore lessen contempt. It is a little or immature or uneducated mind which readily despises. One who has travelled and knows the world in its length and breadth, respects far more views and standpoints other than his own."
Tennyson—A Memoir, by his Son.
False Impressions
JULY 1
"There are thousands and thousands of little untruths that hum and buzz and sting in society, which are too small to be brushed or driven away. They are in the looks, they are in the inflections and tones of the voice, they are in the actions, they are in reflections rather than in direct images that are represented. They are methods of producing impressions that are false, though every means by which they are produced is strictly true. There are little unfairnesses between man and man, that are said to be minor matters and that are small things; there are little unjust judgments and detractions; there are petty violations of conscience; there are ten thousand of these flags of passions in men which are called foibles or weaknesses, but which eat like moths. They take away the temper, they take away magnanimity and generosity, they take from the soul its enamel and its polish. Men palliate and excuse them, but that has nothing to do with their natural effect on us. They waste and destroy us, and that, too, in the soul's silent and hidden parts."
Henry Ward Beecher.
"A lie which is half a truthIs ever the blackest of lies."
Tennyson.
Truth
JULY 2
"Truth is the great mark at which we ought to aim in all things—truth in thought, truth in expression, truth in work. Those who habitually sacrifice truth in small things will find it difficult to pay her the respect they should do in great things."
LordIddesleigh.
"Stand upright, speak thy thought, declareThe truth thou hast that all may share.Be bold, proclaim it everywhere,They only live who dare."
SirLewis Morris.
"The mind can only repose upon the stability of truth."
Dr.Johnson.
Truthfulness
JULY 3
"Be profoundly honest. Never dare to say ... through ardent excitement or conformity to what you know you are expected to say, one word which at the moment when you say it, you do not believe. It would cut down the range of what you say, perhaps, but it would endow every word that was left with the force of ten."
Phillips Brooks.
"Be honest with yourself, whatever the temptation; say nothing to others that you do not think, and play no tricks with your own mind. Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in this world, insincerity is the most dangerous."
J. A. Froude.
"Truthfulness is the foundation of all personal excellence. It exhibits itself in conduct. It is rectitude, truth in action, and shines through every word and deed."
Samuel Smiles.
Accuracy
JULY 4
"We always weaken what we exaggerate."
La Harpe.
"It is no great advantage to have a lively wit if exactness be wanting. The perfection of a clock does not consist in its going fast, but in its keeping good time."
Vauvenargues.
"After much vehement talk about 'the veracities,' will come utterly unveracious accounts of things and people—accounts made unveracious by the use of emphatic words where ordinary words alone are warranted: pictures of which the outlines are correct, but the lights and shades and colours are doubly and trebly as strong as they should be."
Herbert Spencer.
Truthfulness
JULY 5
"It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear."
Thoreau.
"Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth. It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration, such as is often found in mutual love.Yeaandnaymean nothing; the meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought."
Virginibus Puerisque,R. L. Stevenson.
Truthfulness
JULY 6
"In very truth lying is a hateful and accursed vice. It is words alone that distinguish us from the brute creation, and knit us to each other. If we did but feel proper horror of it, and the fearful consequences that spring from such a habit, we would pursue it with fire and sword, and with far more justice than other crimes. I observe that parents take pleasure in correcting their children for slight faults, which make little impression on the character, and are of no real consequence. Whereas lying, in my opinion, and obstinacy, though in a less degree, are vices, the rise and progress of which ought to be particularly watched and counteracted; these grow with their growth, and when once the tongue has got awrong set, it is impossible to put it straight again. Whence we see men, otherwise of honourable natures, slaves to this vice. If falsehood had, like truth, only one face, we should be on more equal terms with it, for we should consider the contrary to what the liar said as certain; but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and is a field of boundless extent."
Montaigne.
"Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society."
Emerson.
Truthfulness
JULY 7
"The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers: and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity."
Virginibus Puerisque,R. L. Stevenson.
"Truth is violated by falsehood, and it may be equally outraged by silence."
Amman.
Gossip
JULY 8
"Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the creature it devours."
Diana of the Crossways,G. Meredith.
"Give to a gracious messageA host of tongues; but let ill tidings tellThemselves when they be felt."
Shakespeare.
"Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken."
George Eliot.
"If there is much art in speaking, there is no less in keeping silence. There is an eloquent silence; it serves to praise and to condemn: there is a scornful silence: and there is a respectful silence."
La Rochefoucauld.
Back-biting
JULY 9
"Hear as little as you possibly can to the prejudice of others; believe nothing of the kind unless you are forced to believe it; never circulate, nor approve of those who circulate, loose reports; moderate as far as you can the censure of others; always believe that if the other side were heard a very different account would be given of the matter."
Everyday Christian Life, DeanFarrar.
"We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light."
Emerson.
"Refrain your tongue from back-biting; for there is no word so secret that shall go for nought, and the mouth that belieth, slayeth the soul."
Wisdomi. 2.
Gossip
JULY 10
"When people run about to disseminate some scrap of news which they alone possess, the result is not usually beneficial either to character or to mind."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"Slander meets with no regard from noble minds,Only the base believe what the base only utter."
"No word, once spoken, returnethEven if uttered unwillingly—Shall God excuse our rashness?That which is done, that abides."
Charles Kingsley.
Egotism
July 11
"Above all things, let us avoid speaking too often about ourselves, and referring to our own experiences. Nothing is more disagreeable than a man who is constantly quoting himself."
La Rochefoucauld.
"The pest of society is egotists."
Emerson.
"Avoid the personal view, the small view, the critical and fault-finding view. Run away from gossip as from a pestilence, and keep in your soul great ideals and ideals to solace your solitude. They will drive out petty worries, conceits and thoughts of carking care."
Ada C. Sweet.
Conversation
JULY 12
"The etiquette of conversation consists as much in listening politely as in talking agreeably."
H. A.
"The reason why so few persons are agreeable in conversation is that every one thinks more about what he shall say than about what others are saying, and because one cannot well be a good listener when one is eager to speak."
La Rochefoucauld.
"I am an enemy to long explanations; they deceive either the maker or the hearer, generally both."
Goethe.
Conversation
JULY 13
"The tone of good conversation is flowing and natural; it is neither heavy nor frivolous; it is learned without pedantry, lively without noise, polished without equivocation. It is neither made up of lectures nor epigrams. Those who really converse, reason without arguing, joke without punning, skilfully unite wit and reason, maxims and sallies, ingenious raillery and severe morality. They speak of everything in order that every one may have something to say: they do not investigate too closely, for fear of wearying: questions are introduced as if by-the-bye, and are treated with rapidity; precision leads to elegance, each one giving his opinion, and supporting it with few words. No one attacks wantonly another's opinion, no one supports his own obstinately. They discuss in order to enlighten themselves, and leave off discussing where dispute would begin: every one gains information, every one recreates himself, and all go away contented; nay, the sage himself may carry away from what he has heard matter worthy of silent meditation."
Argument
JULY 14
"Argument is always a little dangerous. It often leads to coolness and misunderstandings. You may gain your argument and lose your friend, which is probably a bad bargain. If you must argue, admit all you can, but try to show that some point has been overlooked. Very few people know when they have had the worst of an argument, and if they do, they do not like it. Moreover, if they know they are beaten, it does not follow that they are convinced. Indeed it is perhaps hardly going too far to say that it is very little use trying to convince any one by argument. State your case as clearly and concisely as possible, and if you shake his confidence in his own opinion it is as much as you can expect. It is the first step gained."
LordAvebury.
"Speak fitly, or be silent wisely."
George Herbert.
"After speech silence is the greatest power in the world."
Lacordaire.
"It is better to remain silent than to speak the truth ill-humouredly, and so spoiling an excellent dish by covering it with bad sauce."
St. Francis de Sales.
Argument
JULY 15
"When opposition of any kind is necessary, drop all colour of emotion out of it and let it be seen in the white light of truth."
"Nothing does reason more right than the coolness of those that offer it: For truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers."
William Penn.
"Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makesError a fault, and truth discourtesy."
George Herbert.
"To speak wisely may not always be easy, but not to speak ill requires only silence."
Argument
JULY 16
"Prejudice is opinion without judgment."
"When a positive Man hath once begun to dispute anything, his Mind is barred up against all Light and better Information. Opposition provokes him, though there be never so good Ground for it, and he seems to be afraid of nothing more, than lest he should be convinced of the Truth."
La Rochefoucauld.
"In proportion as we love truth more and victory less, we shall become anxious to know what it is which leads our opponents to think as they do. We shall begin to suspect that the pertinacity of belief exhibited by them must result from a perception of something we have not perceived. And we shall aim to supplement the portion of truth we have found with the portion found by them."
Herbert Spencer.
An Open Mind
JULY 17
"He often thought that Dr. Arnold's maxim of being prepared each morning to consider everything an open question a good working rule. Not that one should readily change one's opinions, but should always have an open mind, never a closed one, on any question outside exact knowledge."
"He that never changed any of his opinions, never corrected any of his mistakes; and he who was never wise enough to find out any mistakes in himself, will not be charitable enough to excuse what he reckons mistakes in others."
Whichcote.
"Narrow-mindedness is a cause of self-sufficiency. We are slow to believe what is beyond the scope of our vision."
La Rochefoucauld.
Tolerance
JULY 18
"Nothing, in our Lord's wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with regard to error. What seems false to one man's mind may be true to that of another."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
"A genuine universal tolerance is most surely attained, if we do not quarrel with the peculiar characteristics of individual men and races, but only hold fast to the conviction, that what is truly excellent is distinguished by its belonging to all mankind."
GoethetoCarlyle.
"New ideas want a little time to grow into shape: we know how easily a man is startled into shutting his mind against novelty when it is suddenly presented."
Pastor Pastorum,Henry Latham.
Right Use of Speech
JULY 19
"There is no better way, I believe, in which to test the reality of our culture than by the self-discipline it teaches us to use in talk; and it may be that the chief service we can render, the chief outcome that God looks for from our higher education, is that in our homes, in the society around us, we should set a higher example of the right use of speech; the right tone and temper and reticence in conversation; the abhorrence of idle words. Neither let us think that this ever will be easy to us. We must not be affected or pedantic, we must not be always setting other people right; but we must be careful; we must keep our wishes and passions from colouring our view of things; we must take great pains to enter into the minds and feelings of others, to understand how things look to them, and we must remember that, whatever pains we take in that regard, the result is still sure to be imperfect; we must rule our moods, our likes and dislikes, with a firm hand; we must distrust our general impressions till we have frankly, faithfully examined them; we must resist the desire to say clever or surprising things; we must be resolute not to overstate our case; we must let nothing pass our lips that charity would check; we must be always ready to confess our ignorance, and to be silent.—Yes, it is a hard and long task; but it is for a high end, and in a noble service. It is that we may be able to help others; to possess our souls in days of confusion and vehemence and controversy; to grow in the rare grace of judgment; to be such that people may trust us, whether they agree with us or not. It is that we may somewhat detach ourselves from the stream of talk, and learn to listen for the voice of God, and to commit our ways to Him."
Studies in the Christian Character, BishopPaget.
Thoughts
JULY 20
"If we are not responsible for the thoughts that pass our doors, we are at least responsible for those we admit and entertain."
Charles B. Newcomb.
"The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art in life is to have as many of them as possible."
Bovée.
"We lose vigour through thinking continually the same set of thoughts. New thought is new life."
Prentice Mulford.
Culture