Character and Conduct Part 3

... Let each act a.s.soil a fault or help a merit grow: Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads Let love through good deeds show."

_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.

"The Past is something, but the Present more; Will It not, too, be past? Nor fail withal To recognise the Future in your hopes; Unite them in your manhood, each and all, Nor mutilate the perfectness of life!-- You can remember; you can also hope."

A. H. CLOUGH.

Harmony

JANUARY 16

... "THIS is peace To conquer love of self and l.u.s.t of life, To tear deep-rooted pa.s.sion from the breast, To still the inward strife;

For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close; For glory to be Lord of self; for pleasure To live beyond the G.o.ds; for countless wealth To lay up lasting treasure

Of perfect service rendered, duties done In charity, soft speech, and stainless days: These riches shall not fade away in life, Nor any death dispraise."

_The Light of Asia_, E. ARNOLD.

"WE are all of us made more graceful by the inward presence of what we believe to be a generous purpose; our actions move to a hidden music--'a melody that's sweetly played in tune.'"

GEORGE ELIOT.

Ideals

JANUARY 17

"It is not the ideals of earlier years that are the most unattainable.

'The petty done, the undone vast' is not the thought of the youth, but of those who, having done the most, yet count themselves unprofitable servants, because it is to them only that the experience, the knowledge, and the reflection of maturer years have opened up the far vistas of moral possibility."

_The Making of Character_, PROF. MACCUNN.

"In doing is this knowledge won, To see what yet remains undone.

With this our pride repress, And give us grace, a growing store, That day by day we may do more And may esteem it less."

TRENCH.

"Comfort me not!--for if aught be worse than failure from over-stress Of a life's prime purpose, it is to sit down content with a little success."

LYTTON.

The Celestial Surgeon

JANUARY 18

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

"If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness; If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face; If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books, and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-- Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake; Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, Choose Thou, before that spirit die, A piercing pain, a killing sin, And to my dead heart run them in."

_Underwoods_, R. L. STEVENSON.

Influence of Great Men

JANUARY 19

"The thirst for memoirs and lives and letters is not all to be put down to the hero-wors.h.i.+p which is natural to every heart. It means, perhaps, a higher thing than that. It means, in the first place, that great living is being appreciated for its own sake; and, in the second, that great living is being imitated. If it is true that any of us are beginning to appreciate greatness for its own sake--greatness, that is to say, in the sense of great and true living--it is one of the most hopeful symptoms of our history. And, further, if we are going on from the mere admiration of great men to try and live like them, we are obeying one of the happiest impulses of our being. There is indeed no finer influence abroad than the influence of great men in great books, and all that literature can do in supplying the deformed world with worthy and shapely models is ent.i.tled to grat.i.tude and respect."

_The Ideal Life_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

"Glimpses into the inner regions of a great soul do one good. Contact of this kind strengthens, restores, refreshes. Courage returns as we gaze; when we see what has been, we doubt no more that it can be again. At the sight of a MAN we too say to ourselves, Let us also be men."

_Amiel's Journal._

Influence of Great Men

JANUARY 20

"We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living life-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near; the light which enlightens, which has enlightened, the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindling lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary, s.h.i.+ning by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic n.o.bleness, in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them."

CARLYLE.

"My sole fear was the fear of doing an unrighteous or unholy thing."

SOCRATES.

"The truly honest man, here and there to be found, is not only without thought of legal, religious, or social compulsion, when he discharges an equitable claim on him, but he is without thought of self-compulsion. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it; and is, indeed, impatient if anything prevents him from having the satisfaction of doing it."

HERBERT SPENCER.

The Habit of Admiration

JANUARY 21

"'We live by admiration, hope, and love,' Wordsworth tells us,--not, therefore, by contempt, despondency, and hatred. These contract and narrow the soul, as the others enlarge it. The more a man heartily admires, the more he takes into his nature the goodness and beauty which excite his admiration. His being grows up toward what thus evokes his enthusiasm. And the habit of admiration is the outcome of a moral discipline which represses peevish and fault-finding dispositions, and seeks the admirable in every situation and every person that life brings to us. 'Be ye enlarged' implies 'learn to admire and to praise.'"

"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 wors.h.i.+p meanly."