Character and Conduct – 11 August – Friendship

…FOR instance, it often happens that friends need remonstrance and even reproof.   When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought to be taken in good part.   But somehow or other there is truth in what my friend Terence says in his Andria:

‘Compliance gets us friends, plain speaking hate.’

Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is resentment, which is poison to friendship;  but compliance is really the cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a friend plunge into headlong ruin.   But the man who is most to blame is he who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his ruin… If we remonstrate, it should he without bitterness;  if we reprove there should be no word of insult…  But if a man’s ears are so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a friend, we may give him up in despair.   This remark of Cato’s, as so many of his did, shews great acuteness:  ‘There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends:  the former often speak the truth, the latter never.’   Besides, it is a strange paradox that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not.   They are not at all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved for it.

CICERO

MEN of character like to hear of their faults;  the other class do not.

EMERSON

BEFORE giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather, have made it desired.

Amiel’s Journal

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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.