Character and Conduct – 20 April – Unbalanced Memory
IT is so easy to forget a kindness, and to remember a kick. Yet controlling our recollections is almost as important as controlling our temper. We are apt to forget completely a hundred little kindnesses and courtesies which one has shown us, and to remember a single careless slight or thoughtless word. Often we hear it said of some wrong or foolish deed, ‘I have never thought so well of that man since then; it was there he showed his real character,’ – as if a man’s real character appeared more in one separate deed to which, perhaps, he was sorely tempted, than in the striving and overcoming of many days and years.
OUR thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better than we are. And God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don’t see each other’s whole nature.
GEORGE ELIOT.
ENVELOPED in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.
GEORGE ELIOT.
oooOOOooo
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.
Suffolk Vicar 