Precept & Practice – MARCH 1 – Self-reproach

We have no more right to be unjust to ourselves than to be unjust to others.   When in any given case we have done our best, our duty as, according to all the available light, we saw it, we have no right to go on in remorse and self-upbraiding because of what befalls.    As we would forbear to blame another who had honestly done his best, so we should forbear to poison our own souls with reproach.   The dear life might have been prolonged, we say, the fortune saved, the wayward friend won, if only we had known!   Perhaps;  but since we did not and could not know, the not knowing must be accepted as a part of that which was to be-the purpose we do not understand.   It is wrong to darken the years by adding to sorrow the undeserved pang of self-reproach.

The child of God does not look backward to gain fresh energy. His energy is the energy of hope, and not of retrospection. He presses forward; his glance is ever onward.

Reverend Stopford A. Brooke

Thou shalt not rise by grieving over the irremediable past, but by remedying the present.

James Lane Allen

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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