JULY 21
"Culture is not an accident of birth, although our surroundings advance or retard it; it is always a matter of individual education."
Hamilton W. Mabie.
"The secret of culture is to learn that a few great points steadily reappear, alike in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and that these few are alone to be regarded:—the escape from all false ties; courage to be what we are; and the love of what is simple and beautiful,—these, and the wish to serve, to add somewhat to the well-being of men."
Emerson.
"The highest we can attain to is not knowledge, but sympathy with intelligence."
Thoreau.
Courtesy
JULY 22
"Courtesy is really doing unto others as you would be done unto, and the heart of it lies in a careful consideration for the feelings of other people. It comes from putting one's self in his neighbour's place, and trying to enter into his mind, and it demands a certain suppression of one's self, and a certain delicate sympathy with one's neighbour."
Dr.John Watson.
"Even as one tries thus to think out the quality and work of courtesy, to understand the skill and power which it wields so quietly, to see the issues upon which it tells in the lives that are affected by it, one may begin to feel that its place is really with the great forces of character that ennoble and redeem the world; that, simply and lightly as it moves, it rests on deep self-discipline and deals with a real task; that it is far more than a decoration or luxury of leisurely excellence. But it is in contact with those who are growing perfect in it, those who never fail in it, that one may more nearly realise its greatness. In seeing how every part of life is lit and hallowed by it; how common incidents, daily duties, chance meetings, come to be avenues of brightness, and even means of grace; how points of light come quivering out upon the dull routine of business, or the conventionality of pleasure; how God is served through every hour of the day;—it is in seeing this that one may come to think it far from strange that for His beginning of miracles our Saviour chose an act of courtesy."
Studies in the Christian Character, BishopPaget.
Courtesy
JULY 23
"Courtesy. This is Love in society, Love in relation to etiquette. 'Love doth not behave itself unseemly.' Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love. Lovecannotbehave itself unseemly."
The Greatest Thing in the World,Henry Drummond.
"The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become."
O. W. Holmes.
"Kindness is the principle of tact, and respect for others the condition of 'savoir-vivre.'"
Amiel's Journal.
"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."
Emerson.
Courtesy
JULY 24
"True politeness arises from the heart, not the head."
"... The machinery of life is so apt to be heated, one keenly appreciates those who are ever deftly pouring in the cooling oil, by their patience and their tact, their sweetness and their sympathy. And one resents keenly that class of people who are honest and well meaning, but who are persistently discourteous and are not ashamed—I mean the man who is credited with what is called a bluff, blunt manner, and who credits himself with a special quality of downrightness and straightforwardness. He considers it far better to say what he thinks, and boasts that he never minces his words, and people make all kinds of excuses for him, and rather talk as if he were a very fine fellow, beside whom civil-spoken persons are little better than hypocrites. As a matter of fact, no one can calculate the pain this outspoken gentleman causes in a single day, both in his family and outside."
Dr.John Watson.
"There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behaviour."
Goethe.
Manners
JULY 25
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops, which give such a depth to the morning meadows."
Emerson.
"Love's perfect blossom only blowsWhere noble manners veil defect."
C. Patmore.
"The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;For a man by nothing is so well bewrayedAs by his manners."
Spenser.
"True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself."
LordChesterfield.
Manners
JULY 26
"Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of all impediments. They aid our dealings and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all the obstructions on the road."
Emerson.
"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions."
Emerson.
"He is beautiful in face, in port, in manners, who is absorbed in objects which he truly believes to be superior to himself."
Emerson.
"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."
Manners
JULY 27
"Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads. And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature forever puts a premium on reality."
Emerson.
"A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners."
Chesterfield.
"Manners are the ornament of action, and there is a way of speaking a kind word, or of doing a kind thing, which greatly enhances its value. What seems to be done with a grudge, or as an act of condescension, is scarcely accepted as a favour."
S. Smiles.
Manners
JULY 28
"There are many tests by which a gentleman may be known;—but there is one that never fails—How does he exercise power over those subordinate to him? How does he conduct himself towards women and children?... He who bullies those who are not in a position to resist, may be a snob, but cannot be a gentleman. He who tyrannises over the weak and helpless may be a coward, but no true man."
S. Smiles.
"Our servants never seem to leave us; they are paid what many people would call absurdly high wages, but I do not think that is the attraction. My mother does not see very much of them, and finds fault, when rarely necessary, with a simple directness which I have in vain tried to emulate; but her displeasure is so impersonal that there seems to be no sting in it. It is not that they have failed in their duty to herself, but they have been untrue to the larger duty to which she is herself obedient."
The House of Quiet.
Influence
JULY 29
"And just as we may ruin our own characters without knowing it, so we may ruin the characters of others. We are always influencing each other—a truth which I have often impressed upon you, because I feel its deep importance. We cannot help ourselves. And this influence, which we thus unconsciously exercise by our mere presence, by look, gesture, expression of face, is probably all the more potent for being unconscious. There are germs of moral health or disease continually passing from us and infecting for good or ill those about us. We read that when our Lord was on earth virtue went out of Him sometimes, and healed the bodies of those who came in contact with it. His Divine humanity was always diffusing a spiritual atmosphere of purity around Him, which attracted, they knew not how, those who came within the sphere of His influence. So it must be with us in so far as our characters are pure and unselfish and Christlike. Our very presence will influence for good all who are near us, making them purer and nobler and more unselfish, and shaming what is mean and base out of them. If, on the other hand, our characters are ignoble and impure, we shall exude, without knowing or intending it, a poisonous influence on all who come near us. Have we not sometimes felt this mysterious influence—a presence attracting, perhaps awing, us by some sort of spiritual magnetism; or, on the other hand, repelling us as by the presage of impending danger? Let us endeavour to keep this inalienable responsibility of ours always in our thoughts. And it will be a great help to test ourselves now and then by the example of our Divine Master."
Life Here and Hereafter, CanonMacColl.
Influence
JULY 30
"Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal of those who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never look so high again. Remembering this, let it suggest one generous motive for walking heedfully amid the defilements of earthly ways."
N. Hawthorne.
"Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity."
Channing.
"A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet music."
Phillips Brooks.
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
JULY 31
"Make a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your right to blame the bad. Never let a brave and serious struggle after truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognised. Do not be chary of appreciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for it. There is little danger that appreciation shall be given too abundantly. Here and there, perhaps, in your shops and schools and households, there is some one who has too lazily sunk down upon the praise he has received for some good work, and rested in sluggish satisfaction on it; but such disasters hardly count among the unfulfilled lives which have lived meagrely and stuntedly for the lack of some simple cordial human approval of what they have honestly, however blunderingly, tried to do."
Phillips Brooks.
"It is a great sign of mediocrity to be always praising moderately."
Vauvenargues.
"'Quench not the smoking flax'—to which I add, 'Never give unnecessary pain.' The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw yourself into the mind of the cricket—the process is newer and more ingenious; and it is what charity commands."
Amiel's Journal.
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
AUGUST 1
"Christians are very often liable not, perhaps, to put obstacles into the way of efforts to do right so much as to refuse them the needful help, without which they have little chance of succeeding. To look coldly on while our fellows are struggling in the waves of this evil sea and never to hold out a hand or to say a word of encouragement, is very often most cruelly to depress all energy of repentance. The strong virtue that can go on its own way without being shaken by any ordinary temptation too often forgets the duty due to the weakness close to its side. By stern treatment of faults which were yet much struggled against, by cold refusal to acknowledge any except plainly successful efforts, by rejecting the approaches of those who have not yet learnt the right way, but are really wishing in their secret hearts to learn it, those who are strong not unfrequently do much harm to those who are weak."
BishopTemple.
"The best we can do for each other is to remove unnecessary obstacles, and the worst—to weaken any of the motives which urge us to strive."
The Standard of Life, Mrs.Bernard Bosanquet.
Influence
AUGUST 2
"Even in ordinary life, contact with nobler natures arouses the feeling of unused power and quickens the consciousness of responsibility."
BishopWestcott.
"Do we not all know how apt we are to become like those whom we see, with whom we spend our hours, and, above all, like those whom we admire and honour? For good and for evil, alas! For evil—for those who associate with evil or frivolous persons are too apt to catch not only their low tone, but their very manner, their very expression of face, speaking and thinking and acting.... But thank God, ... just in the same way does good company tend to make them high-minded.... I have lived long enough to see more than one man of real genius stamp his own character, thought, even his very manner of speaking, for good or for evil, on a whole school or party of his disciples. It has been said, and truly, I believe, that children cannot be brought up among beautiful pictures,—I believe, even among any beautiful sights and sounds—without the very expression of their faces becoming more beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler."
Charles Kingsley.
Influence
AUGUST 3
"Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence."
Emerson.
"It requires but little knowledge of society and history to assure us of the strong permeating invisible influence upon society at large of any body of men of clear thought, strong conviction, and disciplined conduct. At once many things respond to the magnetism; many are put on their mettle who would not for the world own it: many recognise their own best things more clearly in the new light shed upon them; there is instinctive moral competition. Such influences travel fast and far.... I have always myself believed that the later thought of the Roman world—the mellow stoicism of Aurelius and Epictetus in the second century, with its strong unexplained instinct for a personal and fatherly God, with its gentle and self-denying ethics, shews the tincture of the influence diffused through the thoughts and prayers, the quiet conversations or the dropped words and overheard phrases—or the bearing and countenance of a slave here or a friend there, known or perhaps not known to belong to that strange new body of people with their foolish yet arresting faith, with their practices everywhere spoken against yet of such pure and winning charm—who bore the name of the Nazarene."
The Church's Failures and the Work of Christ, BishopTalbot.
Friendship
AUGUST 4
"We should ever have it fixed in our memories, that by the characters of those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed, and will certainly be judged of by the world. We ought, therefore, to be slow and cautious in contracting intimacy; but when a virtuous friendship is once established, we must ever consider it as a sacred engagement."
Blair.
"Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say unto him: Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired—they admired great things; narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."
Thackeray.
"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."
Socrates.
Friendship
AUGUST 5
"There is nothing so bad for man or woman as to live always with their inferiors. It is a truth so important, that one might well wish to turn aside a moment and urge it, even in its lower aspects, upon the young people who are just making their associations and friendships. Many a temptation of laziness or pride induces us to draw towards those who do not know as much or are not in some way as strong as we are. It is a smaller tax upon our powers to be in their society. But it is bad for us. I am sure that I have known men, intellectually and morally very strong, the whole development of whose intellectual and moral life has suffered and been dwarfed, because they have only accompanied with their inferiors, because they have not lived with men greater than themselves. Whatever else they lose, they surely must lose some culture of humility. If I could choose a young man's companions, some should be weaker than himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of friendship; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might for ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things."
Phillips Brooks.
Friendship
AUGUST 6
"For good or evil a man's moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the outlook of his comrade. It is inevitable, and in all true comradeship it makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom. It is an incalculable enlargement of human responsibility, because it constitutes us, in a measure, guardians each of the other's soul. And yet, it is never the suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one. That is not even true discipleship, but spiritual tyranny. What the play of two personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on either side. The experience of comradeship, with all the new knowledge and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged, but the change is not of the nature of a substitution, but of continuous growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.
"And it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves. It is our refuge from pride. More than all else, comradeship teaches us to walk humbly with God. For while God's trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and self-complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable gratitude. We may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due; we may have competed for the world's prizes, and been filled with gratified ambition at securing them. But however high we rate ourselves, in the hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know that God's great infinite gift of human love is something we have never earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal Fatherhood; and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come again to us as the lives of little children."
Comradeship,May Kendall.
Friendship
AUGUST 7
"Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day."
Charlotte Brontë.
"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another."
Thomas Hughes.
"Friendship cannot be permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must be fellowship in the deepest things of the soul, community in the highest thoughts, sympathy with the best endeavours."
Hugh Black.
Friendship
AUGUST 8
"Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend."
Emerson.
"The end of friendship is for aid and comfort through all the passages of life and death."
Emerson.
"Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy. A friend shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy, and makes it double."
Jeremy Taylor.
"He that is thy friend indeed,He will help thee in thy need.If thou sorrow, he will weep.If thou wake, he cannot sleep.Thus in every grief in heartHe with thee doth bear a part."
Shakespeare.
Friendship
AUGUST 9
"To begin with, how can life be worth living, to use the words of Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself."
Cicero.
"Comradeship is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces in life."
Hugh Black.
"... All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity."
Cicero.
Friendship
August 10
"Beware lest thy friend learn to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love."
Thoreau.
"That he had 'a genius for friendship' goes without saying, for he was rich in the humility, the patience and the powers of trust, which such a genius implies. Yet his love had, too, the rarer and more strenuous temper which requires 'the common aspiration,' is jealous for a friend's growth, and has the nerve to criticise. It is the measure of what he felt friendship to be, that he has defined religion in the terms of it."
Of Henry Drummond,George Adam Smith.
"All men have their frailties, and whoever looks for a friend without imperfection will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner."
Cyrus.
Friendship
AUGUST 11
"... For instance, it often happens that friends need remonstrance and even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there is truth in what my friend Terence says in his Andria: 'Compliance gets us friends, plain speaking hate.'
"Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment, which is poison to friendship; but compliance is really the cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin.... If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we reprove, there should be no word of insult.... But if a man's ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of Cato's, as so many of his did, shews great acuteness: 'There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often speak the truth, the latter never.' Besides, it is a strange paradox that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not. They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved for it."
Cicero.
"Men of character like to hear of their faults; the other class do not."
Emerson.
"Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather, have made it desired."
Amiel's Journal.
Friendship
AUGUST 12
"The friendship of Jesus was not checked or foiled by the discovery of faults or blemishes in those whom He had taken into His life. Even in our ordinary human relations we do not know what we are engaging to do when we become the friend of another. 'For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,' runs the marriage covenant. The covenant in all true friendship is the same. We pledge our friend faithfulness, with all that faithfulness includes. We know not what demands upon us this sacred compact may make in years to come. Misfortune may befall our friend, and he may require our aid in many ways. Instead of being a help he may become a burden. But friendship must not fail, whatever its cost may be. When we become the friend of another, we do not know what faults and follies in him closer acquaintance may disclose to our eyes. But here, again, ideal friendship must not fail."
Personal Friendships of Jesus,J. R. Miller.
"For he that wrongs his friendWrongs himself more, and ever bears aboutA silent court of justice in his breast,Himself the judge and jury, and himselfThe prisoner at the bar, ever condemned."
Tennyson.
Friendship
AUGUST 13
"Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended."
Thoreau.
"What makes us so changeable in our friendships, is our difficulty to discern the qualities of the soul, and the ease with which we detect those of the intellect."
"Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place."
Rabbi Hillel.
"Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together."
Friendship
AUGUST 14
"There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth ... the other is Tenderness."
Emerson.
"The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud."
Emerson.
"People do not sufficiently remember that in every relation of life, as in the closest one of all, they ought to take one another 'for better for worse.' That, granting the tie of friendship, gratitude, esteem, be strong enough to have existed at all, it ought, either actively or passively, to exist for ever. And seeing we can at best know our neighbour, companion, or friend as little, as alas! we often find he knoweth of us, it behoveth us to trust him with the most patient fidelity, the tenderest forbearance; granting unto all his words and actions that we do not understand, the utmost limit of faith that common sense and Christian justice will allow. Nay, these failing, is there not left Christian charity? which being past believing and hoping, still endureth all things."
Friendship
AUGUST 15
"Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make our own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude."
Amiel's Journal.
"Everything that is mine, even to my life, I may give to one I love, but the secret of my friend is not mine to give."
Philip Sidney.
"When true friends part they should lock up one another's secrets and change the keys."
Feltham.
Friendship
AUGUST 16
"So true it is that nature abhors isolation, and ever leans upon something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most pleasing form in our closest friend."
Cicero.
"And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend's strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished."
Cicero.
"In distress a friendComes like a calm to the toss'd mariner."
Euripides.
Friendship
AUGUST 17
"A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in himself."
Amiel's Journal.
"There are some to whom we speak almost in a language of our own, with the confidence that all our broken hints are recognised with a thrill of kinship, and our half-uttered thoughts discerned and shared: some with whom we need not cramp our meaning into the dead form of an explicit accuracy, and with whom we can forecast that we shall walk together in undoubting sympathy even over tracks of taste and belief which we may never yet have touched."
Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief, BishopPaget.
"Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud."
Addison.
Friendship
AUGUST 18
"And though Aristotle does well to warn us that absence dissolves friendship, it is happily none the less true that friend may powerfully influence friend though the two be by no means constant associates. Even far removal in place, or in occupation, or in fortunes, cannot arrest influence. For once any man has true friends, he never again frames his decisions, even those that are most secret, as if he were alone in the world. He frames them habitually in the imagined company of his friends. In their visionary presence he thinks and acts; and by them, as visionary tribunal, he feels himself, even in his unspoken intentions and inmost feelings, to be judged. In this aspect friendship may become a supreme force both to encourage and restrain. For it is not simply what our friends expect of us that is the vital matter here. They are often more tolerant of our failings than is perhaps good for us. It is what in our best moments we believe that they expect of us. For it is then that they become to us, not of their own choice but of ours, a kind of second conscience, in whose presence our weaknesses and backslidings become 'that worst kind of sacrilege that tears down the invisible altar of trust.'"
The Making of Character, ProfessorMacCunn.
Friendship
AUGUST 19
"Few things are more fatal to friendship than the stiffness which cannot take a step towards acknowledgment."
Life of F. W. Crossley,Rendel Harris.
"Do not discharge in haste the arrow which can never return: it is easy to destroy happiness; most difficult to restore it."
Herder.
"Discord harder is to end than to begin."
Spenser.
"Think of this doctrine—that reasoning beings were created for one another's sake; that to be patient is a branch of justice, and that men sin without intending it."
Marcus Aurelius.
Friendship
AUGUST 20
"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of friendship is not the desire to have friends, but the desire to be a friend; not to get good and help from others, but to impart blessing to others. Many of the sighings for friendship which we have are merely selfish longings,—a desire for happiness, for pleasure, for the gratification of the heart, which friends would bring. If the desire were to be a friend, to do others good, to serve and to give help, it would be a far more Christlike longing, and would transform the life and character."
Personal Friendships of Jesus,J. R. Miller.
"To love is better, nobler, more elevating, and more sure, than to be loved. To love is to have found that which lifts us above ourselves; which makes us capable of sacrifice; which unseals the forces of another world. He who is loved has gained the highest tribute of earth; he who loves has entered into the spirit of heaven. The love which comes to us must always be alloyed with the sad sense of our own unworthiness. The love which goes out from us is kept bright by the ideal to which it is directed."
BishopWestcott.
Friendship
AUGUST 21
"Friendships that have been renewed require more care than those that have never been broken off."
La Rochefoucauld.
"Broken friendship may be soldered, but never made sound."
Spanish Proverb.
"A friend once won need never be lost, if we will be only trusty and true ourselves. Friends may part, not merely in body, but in spirit for a while. In the bustle of business and the accidents of life, they may lose sight of each other for years; and more, they may begin to differ in their success in life, in their opinions, in their habits, and there may be, for a time, coldness and estrangement between them, but not for ever if each will be trusty and true. For then they will be like two ships who set sail at morning from the same port, and ere night-fall lose sight of each other, and go each on its own course and at its own pace for many days, through many storms and seas, and yet meet again, and find themselves lying side by side in the same haven when their long voyage is past."
Charles Kingsley.
Friendship
AUGUST 22
"The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay or dislike, hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled, those who have been injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing, and willingness to be pleased, is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless: as when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use for the physician."
The Idler.
"... There is such a disaster, so to speak, as having to break off friendship.... In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse. They should, as I have been told that Cato used to say, rather be unstitched than torn in twain.... For there can be nothing more discreditable than to be at open war with a man with whom you have been intimate.... Our first object then should be to prevent a breach; our second to secure that if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death."
Cicero.
Friendship
AUGUST 23
"Friends—those relations that one makes for one's self."
Deschamps.
"Some one asked Kingsley what was the secret of his strong joyous life; and he answered, 'I had a friend.'"
"The years have taught some sweet, some bitter lessons—none wiser than this: to spend in all things else, but of old friends to be most miserly."
Lowell.
"The best wish for us all is, that when we grow old, as we must do, the fast friends of our age may be those we have loved in our youth."
Mason.
Jealousy
AUGUST 24
"Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vainego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect."
Amiel's Journal.
"Jealousy is a secret avowal of inferiority."
Massillon.
Jealousy
AUGUST 25
"We are not jealous of what we give up, but of what is wrested from our unwilling hands. The first is always ours, the second never can be.
. . . . . . . . .
"Jealousy is not love, but it is the two-edged sword that parts true love from counterfeit. At its touch, the knowledge of what it is to love without reward, thrills heart and brain, sharp and clear, almost a vision of hell. Then if we are base, we die to love; but if we are noble, it is to ourselves we die.
. . . . . . . . .
"It is only what we surrender willingly that is ours always, as the wave never loses what it surrenders to the sea."
Turkish Bonds,May Kendall.
Jealousy
AUGUST 26
"What state of mind can be so blest,As love that warms the gentle brest;Two souls in one; the same desireTo grant the bliss, and to require?If in this heaven a hell we find,'Tis all from thee,O Jealousie!Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind."All other ills, tho' sharp they prove,Serve to refine a perfect love;In absence, or unkind disdainSweet hope relieves the lover's pain;But O! no cure but death we findTo sett us freeFrom Jealousie,Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind."False in thy glass all objects are,Some set too near, and some too far:Thou art the fire of endless might,The fire that burns and gives no light.All torments of the damned, we findIn only thee,O Jealousie;Thou tyrant, tyrant of the mind."
Dryden.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 27
"We should get a lesson in friendship's ministry. Too many wait until those they love are dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes of affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed and speak out their glowing tribute on ears that heed not the laggard praise. Many persons go through life, struggling bravely with difficulty, temptation, and hardship, carrying burdens too heavy for them, pouring out their love in unselfish serving of others, and yet are scarcely ever cheered by a word of approval or commendation, or by delicate tenderness of friendship; then, when they lie silent in death, a whole circle of admiring friends gathers to do them honour. Every one remembers a personal kindness received, a favour shown, some help given, and speaks of it in grateful words. Letters full of appreciation, commendation, and gratitude are written to sorrowing friends. Flowers are sent and piled about the coffin, enough to have strewn every hard path of the long years of struggle. How surprised some good men and women would be, after lives with scarcely a word of affection to cheer their hearts, were they to awake suddenly in the midst of their friends, a few hours after their death, and hear the testimonies that are falling from every tongue, the appreciation, the grateful words of love, the rememberings of kindness! They had never dreamed in life that they had so many friends, that so many had thought well of them, that they were helpful to so many."
Personal Friendships of Jesus,J. R. Miller.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 28
"When our indignation is borne in submissive silence, we are apt to feel twinges of doubt afterwards as to our own generosity, if not justice; how much more when the object of our anger has gone into everlasting silence, and we have seen his face for the last time in the meekness of death."
George Eliot.
"All about us move, these common days, those who would be strengthened and comforted by the good cheer that we could give. Let us not reserve all the flowers for coffin-lids. Let us not keep our alabaster boxes sealed and unbroken till our loved ones are dead. Let us show kindness when kindness will do good. It will make sorrow all the harder to bear if we have to say beside our dead, 'I might have brightened the way a little, if only I had been kinder.'"
Personal Friendships of Jesus,J. R. Miller.
"I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved. The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave."
George Eliot.
Love and Remorse
AUGUST 29
"Oh! do not let us wait to be just or pitiful or demonstrative towards those we love until they or we are struck down by illness or threatened with death! Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!"
Amiel's Journal.
"Too soon, too soon comes Death to showWe love more deeply than we know!The rain that fell upon the heightToo gently to be called delight,Within the dark vale reappearsAs a wild cataract of tears;And love in life should strive to seeSometimes what love in death would be!"
Coventry Patmore.
Dissension
AUGUST 30
"Alas! how light a cause may moveDissension between hearts that love!Hearts that the world in vain had tried,And sorrow but more closely tied;That stood the storm when waves were rough,Yet in a sunny hour fall off,Like ships that have gone down at sea,When heaven was all tranquillity!A something, light as air—a look,A word unkind or wrongly taken—Oh! love that tempests never shook,A breath, a touch like this has shaken;And ruder words will soon rush inTo spread the breach that words begin;And eyes forget the gentle rayThey wore in courtship's smiling day;And voices lose the tone that shedA tenderness round all they said;Till fast declining, one by one,The sweetnesses of love are gone,And hearts, so lately mingled, seemLike broken clouds—or like the streamThat smiling left the mountain's brow,As though its waters ne'er could sever,Yet, ere it reach the plain below,Breaks into floods, that part for ever.O you that have the charge of Love,Keep him in rosy bondage bound!"
Lalla Rookh,T. Moore.
Love
AUGUST 31
"Love is the first and the last and the strongest bond in experience. It conquers distance, outlives all changes, bears the strain of the most diverse opinions."
The Mind of the Master, Dr.John Watson.
"Say never, ye loved once!God is too near above, the Grave, beneath:And all our moments breatheToo quick in mysteries of life and death,For such a word. The eternities avengeAffections light of range;There comes no change to justify that change,Whatever comes,—Lovedonce."
E. B. Browning.
Unrequited Love
September 1
"It was the old problem, of love that may not even spend itself for those it loves. Some hold that the purpose of such privation—as bitter to the spirit as the loss of light, and warmth, and air to the body—is to teach men to love God, and not their fellow-men. Rather, it is to teach them to love human beings more, with love not separate from the love of God, but near to His own heart. Such love is never fruitless, though it may seem to be. Our longing to serve personally is often only longing for the personal reward of service; and love that serves in finite fashion often misses the mark. We hurt where we desire to heal: we bind a greater burden on the life whose load we only strive to lighten. God's cross is always a crown: our crowns are often crosses. The cup of water that we put to our friend's lips is from a poisoned spring. Only the cup that we give God to bear to him, is always pure and cool."
Turkish Bonds,May Kendall.
Unrequited Love
SEPTEMBER 2
"Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morningPale and depart in a passion of tears?Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:Love once: e'en love's disappointment endears,A moment's success pays the failure of years."
R. Browning.
"It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of the reins.'"
Red Pottage,Mary Cholmondeley.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 3
"If we still love those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love?"
The Newcomes,Thackeray.
"They that love beyond the World cannot be separated by it.
"Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship.
"If Absence be not Death, neither is it theirs.
"Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; they live in one another still.
"For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.
"In this Divine Glass they see Face to Face; and their converse is Free as well as Pure.
"This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal."
William Penn.
Bereavement
SEPTEMBER 4
"Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal."
Thackeray.
"I can only say that I sympathise with your grief, and if faith means anything at all it is trusting to those instincts, or feelings, or whatever they may be called, which assure us of some life after this."
Tennyson—a Memoir, by his Son.
"What is it when a child dies? It is the great head-master calling that child up into his own room, away from all the under-teachers, to finish his education under his own eye, close at his feet. The whole thought of a child's growth and development in heaven instead of here on earth, is one of the most exalting and bewildering on which the mind can rest."
Phillips Brooks.
Death of Young Children
SEPTEMBER 5
"Nothing is left or lost, nothing of goodOr lovely; but whatever its first springsHas drawn from God, returns to Him again."
On an Early Death,Trench.
"When one comes to the loss of young children—a sad perplexity—let it not be forgotten that they were given. If in the hour of bitterest grief it were asked of a bereaved mother whether she would prefer never to have possessed in order that she might never have lost—her heart would be very indignant. No little child has ever come from God and stayed a brief while in some human home—to return again to the Father—without making glad that home and leaving behind some trace of heaven. A family had counted themselves poorer without those quaint sayings, those cunning caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. This short visit was not an incident: it was a benediction. The child departs, the remembrances, the influence, the associations remain. If one should allow us to have Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would thank him: when he resumed it for his home he would not take everything, for its loveliness of maid and angel is now ours for ever. And if God recalls the child He lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and consider that what made that child the messenger of God—its purity, modesty, trustfulness, gladness—has passed into our soul."
The Potter's Wheel, Dr.John Watson.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 6
"The dead abide with us! Though stark and coldEarth seems to grip them, they are with us still:—They have forged our chains of being for good or illAnd their invisible hands these hands yet hold.Our perishable bodies are the mouldIn which their strong imperishable will—Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil—Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold."Vibrations infinite of life in death,As a star's travelling light survives its star!So may we hold our lives, that when we areThe fate of those who then will draw this breath,They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,And curse the heritage which we bequeath."
Mathilde Blind.
"We are learning, by the help of many teachers, the extent and the authority of the dominion which the dead exercise over us, and which we ourselves are shaping for our descendants.
"We feel, as perhaps it was impossible to feel before, how at every moment influences from the past enter our souls, and how we in turn scatter abroad that which will be fruitful in the distant future. It is becoming clear to us that we are literally parts of others and they of us."
BishopWestcott.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 7
"I with uncovered headSalute the sacred dead,Who went and who return not. Say not so!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.Blow, trumpets, all your exaltations blow!For never shall their aureoled presence lack:I see them muster in a gleaming row,With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;We find in our dull road their shining track:In every nobler moodWe feel the orient of their spirit glow,Part of our life's unalterable good,Of all our saintlier aspiration:They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation."
James Russell Lowell.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 8
"And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,Am I not richer than of old?Safe in thy immortality,What change can reach the wealth I hold?What chance can mar the pearl and goldThy love hath left in trust for me?And while in life's long afternoon,Where cool and long the shadows grow,I walk to meet the night that soonShall shape and shadow overflow,I cannot feel that thou art far,Since near at need the angels are;And when the sunset gates unbar,Shall I not see thee waiting stand,And, white against the evening star,The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"
John Greenleaf Whittier.
The Dead
SEPTEMBER 9
"Lord, make me one with Thine own faithful ones,Thy Saints who love Thee, and are loved by Thee;Till the day break and till the shadows flee,At one with them in alms and orisons;At one with him who toils and him who runs,And him who yearns for union yet to be;At one with all who throng the crystal sea,And wait the setting of our moons and suns.Ah, my beloved ones gone on before,Who looked not back with hand upon the plough!If beautiful to me while still in sight,How beautiful must be your aspects now;Your unknown, well-known aspects in that light,Which clouds shall never cloud for evermore!"
Christina Rossetti.
Death
SEPTEMBER 10
"Most persons have died before they expire—died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great majority of dying persons await this locking of those gates of life through which its airy angels have been coming and going from the moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have been often called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always there is a preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on the smaller scale there is for the removal of a milk tooth. The roots which hold human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its place. Some of the dying are weary, and want rest, the idea of which is almost inseparable, in the universal mind, from death. Some are in pain, and want to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. And some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as they draw near the next world, they would fain hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over the sands when the foremost travellers send word along the file that water is in sight. Though each little party that follows in a foot-track of its own will have it that the water to which others think they are hastening is a mirage, not the less has it been true in all ages, and for human beings of every creed which recognised a future, that those who have fallen, worn out by their march through the Desert, have dreamed at least of a River of Life, and thought they heard its murmurs as they lay dying."
The Professor at the Breakfast Table,O. W. Holmes.
Crossing the Bar
September 11
"Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me!And may there be no moaning of the bar,When I put out to sea."But such a tide as moving seems asleep,Too full for sound and foam,When that which drew from out the boundless deepTurns again home."Twilight and evening bell,And after that the dark!And may there be no sadness of farewellWhen I embark;"For, tho' from out our bourne of Time and PlaceThe flood may bear me far,I hope to see my Pilot face to faceWhen I have crost the bar."
Tennyson.
Life after Death
SEPTEMBER 12
"If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit of my friend until after it was unfolded at the breaking of the morn, when the sleep was over."
Tennyson—a Memoir, by his Son.
"Life! I know not what thou art,But know that thou and I must part;And when, or how, or where we met,I own to me's a secret yet."Life! we have been long together,Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;—Then steal away, give little warning,Choose thine own time;Say not Good Night, but in some brighter climeBid me Good Morning!"
A. L. Barbauld.