Character and Conduct – 30 April – The Science of Social Life

MUCH of the sorrow of life, however, springs from the accumulation, day by day and year by year, of little trials – a letter written in less than courteous terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your circle, a controversy too hotly conducted.  The trials within this class are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain of kindliness.  Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pinpricks in conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all evidences of an ill-conditioned nature.

The Homely Virtues, Dr. JOHN WATSON.

LET us think, too, how much forbearance must have been shown us that we were not even conscious of needing;  how often, beyond doubt, we have wounded, or annoyed, or wearied those who were so skilful and considerate that we never suspected either our clumsiness or their pain.

Studies in the Christian Character, Bishop PAGET.

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