Precept & Practice – APRIL 26 – Power of Perception

Show kindness towards the weak.   Carlyle pointed out that crabbedness, pride, obstinacy, and affectation are, at bottom, want of strength – weakness.   We would be more considerate of people if we only knew the strength of their temptations and the weakness of their will.    We see only to what they yield.    We know not what is resisted. Give due thought to the power of heredity and the influence of environment.

I have in me some hidden depths of luxury, a secret heart of pleasure, an understanding for the forbidden thing.   I could have walked the broad way with a laughing heart, though, in truth, habit of mind and desire have kept me in the better path.   But offences must come, and woe to him from whom the offence cometh!   I have begun now, and only now, to feel the storms that shake us to our farthest cells of life.   I begin to see how near good is to evil; how near faith is to unfaith;  and how difficult it is to judge from actions only;  how little we can know to-day what we shall feel to-morrow.   Yet one must learn to see deeper, to find motive, not in acts that shake the faith, but in character which needs no explanation.

Gilbert Parker (The Weavers)

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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