Character and Conduct – 19 April – Touchiness
TOUCHINESS, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point.
TOUCHINESS, when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It is self-love inflamed to the acute point.
HE that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green.
DO nothing in a hurry. Nature never does. ‘Most haste, worse speed,’ says the old proverb. If you are in doubt, sleep over it. But, above all, never quarrel in a hurry.
He approaches nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent even though he knows he is in the right.
IF this be one of our chief duties – promoting the happiness of our neighbours – most certainly there is nothing which so entirely runs counter to it, and makes it impossible, as an undisciplined temper.
CONSIDER how much more often you suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
Especially I object to the assumption that his having a fundamentally good disposition is either an apology or a compensation for his bad behaviour.
And yet men laugh over it. ‘Only temper, they call it: a little hot-headedness, a momentary ruffling of the surface, a mere passing cloud.
If he kicks small animals, swears violently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is grossly rude to his wife, it is remarked apologetically that these things mean nothing – they are all temper.
[Fortitude] may be exercised chiefly in doing very little things, whose whole value lies in this, that, if one did not hope in God, one would not do them: