Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 23 – Optimism and Pessimism

It is a shallow optimism that would take a rose-coloured view of the world, whose moan ought to be ever in our ears.   It is an inexcusable pessimism that denies the progress of the race with the centuries.   To-day there are wars at a time and in places;  once it was war at all times and everywhere.   To-day so many women are the victims of man’s sin;  once all women were his slaves.   To-day a massacre fires our blood, once it was an ordinary event.   To-day the poor are at least helped;  once they were left to perish.   The agony of one age is the birth of a better life for its child, and every martyr gains some good for those following.   It is a ghastly struggle any way one looks at it, but it is not meaningless nor fruitless.   The day breaks slowly, and the sun as yet hardly pierces through the banks of black cloud, but the East is glowing, and the darkest is past.

Reverend John Watson (The Potter’s Wheel)

Pessimism is waste of force – the penalty of one who knows not how to live.

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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