Being and Doing – 12 June – Education

THEN learn as much as ever you can about all sorts of things, and so make this world, whilst you have to live in it, a perpetual source of interest and surprise and gratification. That will keep your mind from stagnating.   And then get into the way of feeling for other people’s troubles, and doing what you can to help them away, and that will keep your heart from stagnating.  You may live until you are five times sixty-five if you can, you will never find the world a bit too weary for you.

THAT man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of;  whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order;  ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind;  whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations;  one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience;  who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

Professor HUXLEY

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These quotes are from ‘Being and Doing’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1908 for members of the Being and Doing Guild whose object is to do all they can for the relief of suffering and misery.

Most of the writers are 19th Century Christians from Britain and Europe who were committed to living their faith through deeds as well as words – Being AND Doing.

For many years these words have kept me company and encouraged me on the journey of faith.  I hope they will encourage others also.