Precept and Practice – NOVEMBER 14 – Destructive Criticism

Destructive criticism is never so harmful as when it deals with religious subjects.   For here everything depends upon faith;  and when a man has lost this he never seeks it again.

(Goethe)

Faith is that by which a man lives inwardly, and orders his way outwardly.   Faith is the root, belief the tree, and opinion the foliage that falls and is renewed with the seasons.

…..Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us and God, between us and our neighbour, between us and our better selves…..   And if men seem to us unreasonable, opposers of that which to us is plainly true, let us remember that we are not here to convince men, but to let our light shine.  Knowledge is not necessarily light, and it is light, not knowledge, that we have to diffuse.

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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