Precept and Practice – OCTOBER 26 – Simplify, Simplify

In general the great men of antiquity were poor…..   this is the rock on which so many split to-day.   People no longer know how to live upon little…..

Retrenchment of the useless, the want even of the relatively necessary is the high road to Christian self-denial as well as to antique strength of character.

Whoever has attained the moral beauty of life, not only before God, but before man, cannot give way under material reverses without showing that his greatness was hollow, his cleverness simply a piece of good luck.  A great heart in a little house is of all things here below that which has ever touched me most.

Lacordaire

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Our life is frittered away by detail…..   Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand;  instead of a million, count half-a-dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail…..   Simplify, simplify.

Thoreau

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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