Character and Conduct – 10 February – Order

WHAT comfort, what strength, what economy there is in order – material order, intellectual order, moral order.   To know where one is going and what one wishes – this is order;  to keep one’s word and one’s engagements – again order;  to have everything ready under one’s hand, to be able to dispose of all one’s forces, and to have all one’s means of whatever kind under command – still order;  to discipline one’s habits, one’s efforts, one’s wishes;  to organise one’s life, to distribute one’s time, to take the measure of one’s duties and make one’s rights respected;  to employ one’s capital and resources, one’s talent and one’s chances profitably; –  all this belongs to and is included in the word order.   Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over oneself;  order is power.   Esthetic and moral beauty consist, the first in a true conception of order, and the second in submission to it, and in the realisation of it, by, in, and around oneself.   Order is man’s greatest need and his true well-being.

Amiel’s Journal

THE commissioning of the Twelve imposed no particular form of rule;  but it taught the lesson that organisation and order and the distribution of duty were essential in things spiritual as well as in things temporal, and that it was well for the children of light to be as ‘wise in their generation’ as the children of the world.

Pastor Pastorum, HENRY LATHAM

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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.