Precept and Practice – JULY 31 – The Language of Friends
We don’t want arguments from our friends; we want sympathies, sensibilities – emotional bonds the right person’s silence is worth more for companionship than the wisest talk in the world from anybody else. It isn’t your mind that is needed here, or what you know; it is your heart and what you feel.
Silence is the ambrosial night in the intercourse of friends, in which their sincerity is recruited and takes deeper root. The language of friends is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
(H. D. Thoreau)
In friendship – ev’n thought meets thought ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
(Pope)
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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
Suffolk Vicar 