Precept & Practice – FEBRUARY 25 – The Duty of Self-patience

Some if they have gone on well, and possibly run for a while, yet if they fall, then they are ready in a desperate malcontent to lie still, and think all is lost;  and in this peevish fretting and their falls some men even please themselves and take it for repentance, whereas indeed it is not that but rather pride and humour.  Repentance is a more submissive, humble thing.

Archbishop Leighton

Remorse must fall short of despair, self-knowledge of self-hatred, or there remains no possibility of a rebound to hope and effort.

Anthony Hope (Double Harness)

We must cultivate the duty of self-patience and self-toleration.   Of all the religionists and moralists who ever taught, Fénelon is the only one who has distinctly formulated the duty which a self-educator owes to himself.  Have patience with yourself is a direction often recurring in his writings, and a most important one it is, – because patience with ourselves is essential if we would have patience with others.

H. Beecher Stowe (Little Foxes)

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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