Character and Conduct Part 38

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 20

"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 Friends.h.i.+ps of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.

"To love is better, n.o.bler, 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."

Bishop WESTCOTT.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 21

"Friends.h.i.+ps that have been renewed require more care than those that have never been broken off."

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.

"Broken friends.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.

Friends.h.i.+p

AUGUST 22

"The most fatal disease of friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p.... In such cases friends.h.i.+ps 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 unst.i.tched 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 friends.h.i.+p should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death."

CICERO.

Friends.h.i.+p

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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect."

_Amiel's Journal._

"Jealousy is a secret avowal of inferiority."

Ma.s.sILLON.

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 h.e.l.l. Then if we are base, we die to love; but if we are n.o.ble, 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.