Precept and Practice – JULY 15 – Length and Breadth of Life

When a man has length and breadth of life together, we feel at once how the two help each other.   Length without breadth is hard and narrow.   Breadth without length – sympathy with others in a man who has no intense and clear direction for himself- is soft and weak.   You see this in the instinctive and strong dislike which all men have for the professional reformer and philanthropist.   The world dislikes a man, who, with no definite occupation of his own, not trying to be anything particular himself, devotes himself to telling other people what they ought to be.   It may allow his good intentions, but it will not feel his influence.

The man whom the world delights to feel is the man who has evidently conceived some strong and distinct purpose for himself, from which he will allow nothing to turn his feet aside, who means to be something with all his soul;  and yet who finds in his own earnest effort to fill out his own career, the interpretation of the careers of other men;  and also finds, in sympathy with other men, the transfiguration and sustainment of his own appointed struggle.

Bishop Phillips Brooks

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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