Precept & Practice – FEBRUARY 4 – Duty
Duty is far more than love. It is the upholding law through which the weakest become strong, without which all strength is unstable as water.
No character, however harmoniously framed and gloriously gifted, can be complete without this abiding principle: it is the cement which binds the whole moral edifice together, without which all power, goodness, intellect, truth, happiness, love itself, can have no permanence, but all the fabric of existence crumbles away from under us, and leaves us at last sitting in the midst of ruin, astonished at our own desolation.
Mrs. Jameson
Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and we knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill.
When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.
Theodore Parker
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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice
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
Suffolk Vicar 