Precept & Practice – MAY 29 – The Duty of Being Happy

Is it not a duty we owe ourselves and other people to be supremely happy, for ever young in spirit?   We have all met those whose very being seems to thrive from some unseen source of happiness, who seem to know by instinct that all is good.   What influence can resist such a power, and what trouble can long weigh down such a bounding spirit?…..

It is a matter of economy to be happy, to view life and all its conditions from the highest angle.   It enables one to seize life at its best. It expands the soul.   It calls power to do our bidding.   It renews.   It awakens.   It is a far truer form of sympathy than that mistaken sense of communion with grief and suffering which holds our friends in misery instead of helping them out of it…..   A deep unquenchable spirit of joy is at once the truest evidence that we believe in the beneficence of the Father, and that we have penetrated deep enough into life’s mystery to see how best, most economically, most courageously and helpfully to take it.

H. Dresser

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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