Precept and Practice – DECEMBER 26 – Bearing Sorrow

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first stocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength.   It is in the slow, changed life that follows – in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine;-  it is then that despair threatens, it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.

(George Eliot)

Mental sufferings, whether they come upon us from our misfortune er our fault, cannot be cured by reflection or reason.   No remedy is so effectual as time and resolute activity.

(Goethe)

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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