Character and Conduct – 31 July – Quench not the Smoking Flax

MAKE a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your right to blame the bad.   Never let a brave and serious struggle after truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognised.   Do not be chary of appreciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for it. There is little danger that appreciation shall be given too abundantly.   Here and there, perhaps, in your shops and schools and households, there is some one who has too lazily sunk down upon the praise he has received for some good work, and rested in sluggish satisfaction on it;  but such disasters hardly count among the unfulfilled lives which have lived meagrely and stuntedly for the lack of some simple cordial human approval of what they have honestly, however blunderingly, tried to do.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

IT IS a great sign of mediocrity to be always praising moderately.

VAUVENARGUES

‘QUENCH not the smoking flax’ – to which I add, ‘Never give unnecessary pain.’   The cricket is not the nightingale;  why tell him so?   Throw yourself into the mind of the cricket – the process is newer and more ingenious;  and it is what charity commands.

Amiel’s Journal

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 them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.