Precept & Practice – APRIL 15 – Repression

There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression…..   Life consists of two parts, – Expression and Repression, – each of which has its solemn duties.   To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of expression: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness belongs the duty of repression.   Some very religious and moral people err by applying repression to both classes alike.   They repress equally the expression of love and of hatred, of pity and of anger.   Such forget one great law, as true in the moral world as in the physical, – that repression lessens and deadens…..   It comes far easier to scold our friend, in an angry moment, than to say how much we love, honour, and esteem him in a kindly mood.   Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force;  love is shame-faced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the door-latch…..   People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of course, a last year’s growth, with no present buds and blossoms.

H. Beecher Stowe (Little Foxes)

oooOOOooo

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