Precept & Practice – MAY 7 – Dullness

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life’s endeavour springs in some degree from dullness.   We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have.   Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould;  we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive;  we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience.   There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

R. L. Stevenson (Across the Plains)

That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism – the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn.

George Eliot

Between the great things that we cannot do, and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.

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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