Precept and Practice – JULY 17 – The Real Interest of Life

Every one confesses that the more we can feel with all that is human, the better and fresher we are, the more capable of fine enjoyment, the more delightful and useful to the world…..   But very few make it, as Christ did, the business of their lives.   Men have more interest in business, in getting on, in what they call practical life, which means lining their pockets, than in learning, through love of men and women, to know why men and women weep and rejoice, why they love and hate, how they live and love and die, of what stuff human nature is made, and how it behaves in the varied circumstances of the great drama we are playing in sight of the universe.   Yet there is the real interest of human, of public life;  the impassionating interest which never knows satiety, which never allows the conscience to go to sleep, the intellect to weary, the imagination to become empty of subjects, the heart to grow cold, or the spirit to starve, and which, best of all, is of itself eternal.

(Reverend Stopford A. Brooke – The Gospel of Joy)

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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