On some natures….. the expectation of others acts as a stimulus, the force of which is quite in-calculable. It spurs a natural humility into fixed resolution and self-reliance; turns sloth into energy, earnestness into action, and goads diffidence up the hill of achievement.
Every one confesses that the more we can feel with all that is human, the better and fresher we are, the more capable of fine enjoyment, the more delightful and useful to the world….. But very few make it, as Christ did, the business of their lives.
He is tenderest, not who has sinned, as is sometimes vainly thought, – but who has known best the power of sin, by overcoming it.
Length without breadth is hard and narrow. Breadth without length – sympathy with others in a man who has no intense and clear direction for himself- is soft and weak.
As I rub my way on in the journey of life, I find that goodness, real and unpretending, is the one thing of which one never wearies.
Christ sets His followers no tasks. He appoints no hours. He allots no sphere. He Himself simply went about and did good.
…we yield more freely to the one who helps to foster our particular personality than to him who would thrust it aside, and replace it by his own.
Given a book, and anything may happen in the way of inspiration; given a personality, and some Peter may leave all to follow Him.
If we can catch a disease from certain persons, we can also catch health from others: if some companions exhaust and depress, others equally exalt and vivify.
A deep, true love will lift a soul out of the shallows of selfishness and the mud of fleshliness, when all other powers combined have failed to extricate it from the slough
Suffolk Vicar 