Precept and Practice – JULY 25 – Enlarging our Borders

…..A capacity in us may date from a definite meeting or conversation with some fellow-men.   The more persons we can really meet, then, the better for us.   If ‘here is a person with some message for me’ be the feeling with which we are wont to meet strangers, the result in four years may be worth one year at a college, so great is the daily income of such a man’s mind as compared with one who instinctively shuts himself up to a stranger.    But to get this real profit from persons one must really meet them, not merely encounter – ‘meet’ them and not merely their outsides.   How?   Some by the gift of eyes to see the inside of a neighbour;  others by a genius for geniality, i.e. letting others’ cordiality into the inside of oneself;  few win a great success without conscious deliberate aim.   Genius helps greatly, but even for genius there is no royal road to an art-and this is a fine art to extract a good education out of society.   It takes bravery, modesty, sympathy, and high choices.   Bravery to conquer shyness if one has it…..   the clean kind heart is needed;  for this admits one past the mere doors…..  to the inner living-rooms of mind and heart.

(W. C. Gannett – On making Oneself Beautiful)

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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