Precept and Practice – AUGUST 27 – Conversation

The best education in the world is that which we insensibly acquire from conversation with our intellectual superiors.   In learning to know other things and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves and are to ourselves better worth knowing.   In our own nature, as it expands we find a sweeter and yet less selfish companionship.

All that we have read and learned, all that has occupied and interested us in the thoughts and deeds of men, abler or wiser than ourselves, constitutes at last a spiritual society, of which we can never be deprived, for it rests in the heart and soul of the man who has acquired it. 

(Owen Meredith)

Among the men of letters are to be found the brightest specimens and the chief benefactors of mankind.   It is they that keep awake the finer parts of our souls;  that give us better aims than power or pleasure, and withstand the total sovereignty of Mammon on this earth.   They are the vanguard in the march of mind.

(Carlyle)

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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