All merely negative purity has something of the taint of the impurity that it resists.   The effort not to be frivolous is frivolous itself. The effort not to be selfish is very apt to be only another form of selfishness.

Every reader of the Gospels has marked the sympathy of Jesus with children.   How He watched their games!  How angry He was with His disciples for belittling them!  How He used to warn men, whatever they did, never to hurt a little child!   How grateful were children’s praises when all others had turned against Him!   

But every action must have its reaction upon the nature of the one who puts it forth.   If it does not, it fails of that which is its highest result;

Sharpness, bitterness, sarcasm, acute observation, divination of motives – all these things disappear when a man is earnestly conforming himself to the image of Christ Jesus.

IT was often in George Eliot’s mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is that human beings should love one another better. 

Holiness, of course, is a greater word, but we cannot produce that in others.   That is reserved for God Himself, but what is put in our power is happiness, and for that each man is his brother’s keeper. 

THERE is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbours good.   One person I have to make good:  myself. 

We hear much of love to God;  Christ spoke much of love to man.   We make a great deal of peace with heaven;  Christ made much of peace on earth.

Try hard to be humble, to be free from all conceit, to question your own opinions, to give up your own way, to put simplicity first among all excellences of character, to be ready to think yourself in the wrong, to prefer others to yourself; 

An angry person is generally impolite;  and where contention and ill-will are, there can be no courteousness.