Character and Conduct – 2 March – Wasted Emotions
PITY, indignation, love, felt and not made into acts of pity or of self-sacrifice, lose their very heart in our dainty dreaming, and are turned into their opposites.
Our animation and activity of love, unexercised, becomes like the unused muscle, attenuated; and we are content to think with pleasure of the times when we were animated and active – a vile condition.
But the worst wretchedness of these losses does not consist in the damage we do ourselves, but in the loss of power to benefit mankind, in the loss of power to do God’s work for the salvation and the greater happiness of man. We are guilty to man, and guilty before God, when we lose our powers in inglorious ease. We owe ourselves to men and women; no amount of work frees us from the duty of keeping ourselves in the best possible trim, body and soul, mind and spirit, that we may nobly work the loving work of Him that sent us.
The Gospel of Joy, STOPFORD BROOKE.
OPPORTUNITIES are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them.
VAN DYKE.
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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 them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.
Suffolk Vicar 