Character and Conduct – 28 May – Sin

I HAVE often observed in the course of my experience of human life, that every man, even the worst, has something good about him;  though often nothing else than a happy temperament of constitution, inclining him to this or that virtue.   For this reason, no man can say in what degree any other person besides himself can be, with strict justice, called wicked.   Let any one with the strictest character for regularity of conduct among us, examine impartially how many vices he has never been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but for want of opportunity, or some accidental circumstances intervening;  how many of the weaknesses of mankind he has escaped because he was out of the line of such temptation; and-what often, if not always, weighs more than all the rest – how much he is indebted to the world’s good opinion because the world does not know all:  I say, any man who can thus think will scan the failings, nay, the faults and crimes of mankind with a brother’s eye.

BURNS

VERY late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature’s real failing or weakness, to sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness of sin.

An Unhappy Girl, IVAN TURGENEV

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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.