Character and Conduct – 2 September – Unrequited Love
INFANCY? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e’en love’s disappointment endears,
A moment’s success pays the failure of years.
R. BROWNING
IT looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime ‘let out all the length of the reins.’
Red Pottage, MARY CHOLMONDELEY
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.
Suffolk Vicar 