The roots of the future are in our past.  The coming years can only be in large measure the sequel to past years.   This comfort we have hampered, fettered, crippled we may be by follies and errors of the past, by circumstance which hems us in, by habits and tempers and modes of feeling which seem to grip us in iron grasp, yet all is not lost for the most hopeless. Imperial will is ours;  enfeebled, perhaps, but ours still.

And there is, too, a grace of God, which reaches us through all sorts of unexpected channels, and makes us strong where we seemed most weak.

And though the odds be great against us, and the fight uphill, and the time short, yet resolute purpose and honest endeavour can work miracles and win victory out of defeat, and build a happy new year out of the wreck of the past.

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE M. WHISHAW