Character and Conduct – 9 January – Purpose

HE who lives without a definite purpose achieves no higher end than to serve as a warning to others.   He is a kind of bell-buoy, mournfully tolled by the waves of circumstance, to mark the rocks or shoals which are to be avoided.

SURELY there is something to be done from morning till night, and to find out what is the appointed work of the onward-tending soul.

FANNY KEMBLE

I ASK you while hope is still fresh and enthusiasm unchilled to gain some conception of the solemnity, the vastness, the unity, the purpose of life:  to pause in the street or on the river bank and ask yourselves what that strange stream of pleasure and frivolity and sorrow and vice means, and means to you:  to reflect that you are bound by intelligible bonds to every suffering, sinning man and woman:  to learn, while the lesson is comparatively easy, the secret of human sympathy:  to search after some of the essential relationships of man to man: to interpret a little of the worth of even trivial labour:  to grow sensitive to the feelings of the poor:  to grow considerate to the claims of the weak.

Bishop WESTCOTT

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

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing the her readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.