Character and Conduct – 22 June – Sound Judgment

THAT is a penetrating sarcasm of George Eliot’s in ‘Amos Barton’:  It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs.   It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.   Everybody needs the suggestion that is embodied in the above remark.   Our judgments of men are always more or less defective.   But it is the man who prides himself on his outspokenness, the man who thinks it would be cowardice to withhold an opinion of men and things, particularly if he is charged with the duty of public utterance, that needs to learn that blue or brown or green is not black, and that in nothing is so much discrimination needed as in the diagnosis of character.

NEVER does a man portray his own character more vividly than in his manner of portraying another.

RICHTER

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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.