Precept & Practice – FEBRUARY 22 – Slaves to Opinions
Why will you keep caring for what the world says? Try, oh! try to be no longer a slave to it. You can have little idea of the comfort of freedom from it – it is bliss! All this caring for what people say is from pride. Hoist your flag and abide by it. In an infinitely short space of time all secrets will be divulged. Therefore if you are misjudged, why trouble to put yourself right? You have no idea what a great deal of trouble it will save you.
General Gordon
While you, you think
What others think, or what you think they’ll say,
Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible
Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream
Of aspen trees by flickering breezes swayed Lead me with irons, drive me from morn to night,
I am not the utter slave which that man is Whose sole word, thought, and deed are built on what
The world may say of him.
A. Helps (Friends in Council)
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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 