Character and Conduct – 17 May – Character: Negative Virtues

SOME people seem to be here in the world just on their guard all the while, always so afraid of doing wrong that they never do anything really right.   They do not add to the world’s moral force;  as the man, who, by constant watchfulness over his own health, just keeps himself from dying, contributes nothing to the world’s vitality.   All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists.   The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

BEWARE of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.   It is good to abstain and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful and hurtful.  But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.

O. W. HOLMES

THE seductions of life are strong in every age and station;  we make idols of our affections, idols of our customary virtues;  we are content to avoid the inconvenient wrong, and to forego the inconvenient right with almost equal self-approval, until at last we make a home for our conscience among the negative virtues and the cowardly vices.

The Life of R. L. Stevenson, GRAHAM BALFOUR

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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.