Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 15 – Obligations

It is strange, when one comes to think of it, how scrupulous men are about accepting money from friends of whom they accept every other gift cheerfully and gratefully.

Goethe

To wish to do without other men and to be under obligation to no one, is a sure mark of a mind devoid of feeling.

Joubert

When one gets to the heart of life, and understands that nothing is one’s own but that all things are God’s, there is no such thing as a sense of obligation;  such a sense is a mere vulgar superficiality.

Ellen Thornycroft Fowler (Isabel Carnaby)

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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