Character and Conduct – 6 February – Time and Method

THE thrift of time will repay in after life with usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.

GLADSTONE

ONE of the striking characteristics of successful persons is their faculty of readily determining the relative importance of different things.   There are many things which it is desirable to do, a few are essential, and there is no more useful quality of the human mind than that which enables its possessor at once to distinguish which the few essential things are.   Life is so short and time so fleeting that much which one would wish to do must fain be omitted.   He is fortunate who perceives at a glance what it will do, and what it will not do, to omit.   This invaluable faculty, if not possessed in a remarkable degree naturally, is susceptible of cultivation to a considerable extent.   Let any one adopt the practice of reflecting, every morning, what must necessarily be done during the day, and then begin by doing the most important things first, leaving the others to take their chance of being done or left undone.   In this way attention first to the things of first importance soon acquires the almost irresistible force of habit, and becomes a rule of life.   There is no rule more indispensable to success.

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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.