appreciates those who are ever deftly pouring in the cooling oil, by
their patience and their tact, their sweetness and their sympathy. And
one resents keenly that class of people who are honest and well meaning,
but who are persistently discourteous and are not ashamed--I mean the
man who is credited with what is called a bluff, blunt manner, and who
credits himself with a special quality of downrightness and
straightforwardness. He considers it far better to say what he thinks,
and boasts that he never minces his words, and people make all kinds of
excuses for him, and rather talk as if he were a very fine fellow,
beside whom civil-spoken persons are little better than hypocrites. As a
matter of fact, no one can calculate the pain this outspoken gentleman
causes in a single day, both in his family and outside."
Dr. JOHN WATSON.
"There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs
the purest courtesy in the outward behaviour."
GOETHE.
Manners
JULY 25
"Manners are the happy ways of doing things. If they are superficial, so
are the dew-drops, which give such a depth to the morning meadows."
EMERSON.
"Love's perfect blossom only blows
Where noble manners veil defect."
C. PATMORE.
"The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed
As by his manners."
SPENSER.
"True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in
treating others just as you love to be treated yourself."
Lord CHESTERFIELD.
Manners
JULY 26
"Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of all impediments. They aid
our dealings and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting
rid of all the obstructions on the road."
EMERSON.
"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions."
EMERSON.
"He is beautiful in face, in port, in manners, who is absorbed in
objects which he truly believes to be superior to himself."
EMERSON.
"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."
Manners
JULY 27
"Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his
point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads.
And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making
him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression.
Nature forever puts a premium on reality."
EMERSON.
"A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's
ill manners."
CHESTERFIELD.
"Manners are the ornament of action, and there is a way of speaking a
kind word, or of doing a kind thing, which greatly enhances its value.
What seems to be done with a grudge, or as an act of condescension, is
scarcely accepted as a favour."
S. SMILES.
Manners
JULY 28
"There are many tests by which a gentleman may be known;--but there is
one that never fails--How does he exercise power over those subordinate
to him? How does he conduct himself towards women and children?... He
who bullies those who are not in a position to resist, may be a snob,
but cannot be a gentleman. He who tyrannises over the weak and helpless
may be a coward, but no true man."
S. SMILES.
"Our servants never seem to leave us; they are paid what many people
would call absurdly high wages, but I do not think that is the
attraction. My mother does not see very much of them, and finds fault,
when rarely necessary, with a simple directness which I have in vain
tried to emulate; but her displeasure is so impersonal that there seems
to be no sting in it. It is not that they have failed in their duty to
herself, but they have been untrue to the larger duty to which she is
herself obedient."
_The House of Quiet._
Influence
JULY 29
"And just as we may ruin our own characters without knowing it, so we
may ruin the characters of others. We are always influencing each
other--a truth which I have often impressed upon you, because I feel its
deep importance. We cannot help ourselves. And this influence, which we
thus unconsciously exercise by our mere presence, by look, gesture,
expression of face, is probably all the more potent for being
unconscious. There are germs of moral health or disease continually
passing from us and infecting for good or ill those about us. We read
that when our Lord was on earth virtue went out of Him sometimes, and
healed the bodies of those who came in contact with it. His Divine
humanity was always diffusing a spiritual atmosphere of purity around
Him, which attracted, they knew not how, those who came within the
sphere of His influence. So it must be with us in so far as our
characters are pure and unselfish and Christlike. Our very presence will
influence for good all who are near us, making them purer and nobler and
more unselfish, and shaming what is mean and base out of them. If, on
the other hand, our characters are ignoble and impure, we shall exude,
without knowing or intending it, a poisonous influence on all who come
near us. Have we not sometimes felt this mysterious influence--a
presence attracting, perhaps awing, us by some sort of spiritual
magnetism; or, on the other hand, repelling us as by the presage of
impending danger? Let us endeavour to keep this inalienable
responsibility of ours always in our thoughts. And it will be a great
help to test ourselves now and then by the example of our Divine
Master."
_Life Here and Hereafter_, Canon MACCOLL.
Influence
JULY 30
"Let us reflect that the highest path is pointed out by the pure Ideal
of those who look up to us, and who, if we tread less loftily, may never
look so high again. Remembering this, let it suggest one generous motive
for walking heedfully amid the defilements of earthly ways."
N. HAWTHORNE.
"Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others
have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may
spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity."
CHANNING.
"A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than
another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet
music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet
music."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
JULY 31
"Make a great deal more of your right to praise the good than of your
right to blame the bad. Never let a brave and serious struggle after
truth and goodness, however weak it may be, pass unrecognised. Do not be
chary of appreciation. Hearts are unconsciously hungry for it. There is
little danger that appreciation shall be given too abundantly. Here and
there, perhaps, in your shops and schools and households, there is some
one who has too lazily sunk down upon the praise he has received for
some good work, and rested in sluggish satisfaction on it; but such
disasters hardly count among the unfulfilled lives which have lived
meagrely and stuntedly for the lack of some simple cordial human
approval of what they have honestly, however blunderingly, tried to do."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
"It is a great sign of mediocrity to be always praising moderately."
VAUVENARGUES.
"'Quench not the smoking flax'--to which I add, 'Never give unnecessary
pain.' The cricket is not the nightingale; why tell him so? Throw
yourself into the mind of the cricket--the process is newer and more
ingenious; and it is what charity commands."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Quench not the Smoking Flax"
AUGUST 1
"Christians are very often liable not, perhaps, to put obstacles into
the way of efforts to do right so much as to refuse them the needful
help, without which they have little chance of succeeding. To look
coldly on while our fellows are struggling in the waves of this evil sea
and never to hold out a hand or to say a word of encouragement, is very
often most cruelly to depress all energy of repentance. The strong
virtue that can go on its own way without being shaken by any ordinary
temptation too often forgets the duty due to the weakness close to its
side. By stern treatment of faults which were yet much struggled
against, by cold refusal to acknowledge any except plainly successful
efforts, by rejecting the approaches of those who have not yet learnt
the right way, but are really wishing in their secret hearts to learn
it, those who are strong not unfrequently do much harm to those who are
weak."
Bishop TEMPLE.
"The best we can do for each other is to remove unnecessary obstacles,
and the worst--to weaken any of the motives which urge us to strive."
_The Standard of Life_, Mrs. BERNARD BOSANQUET.
Influence
AUGUST 2
"Even in ordinary life, contact with nobler natures arouses the feeling
of unused power and quickens the consciousness of responsibility."
Bishop WESTCOTT.
"Do we not all know how apt we are to become like those whom we see,
with whom we spend our hours, and, above all, like those whom we admire
and honour? For good and for evil, alas! For evil--for those who
associate with evil or frivolous persons are too apt to catch not only
their low tone, but their very manner, their very expression of face,
speaking and thinking and acting.... But thank God, ... just in the same
way does good company tend to make them high-minded.... I have lived
long enough to see more than one man of real genius stamp his own
character, thought, even his very manner of speaking, for good or for
evil, on a whole school or party of his disciples. It has been said, and
truly, I believe, that children cannot be brought up among beautiful
pictures,--I believe, even among any beautiful sights and
sounds--without the very expression of their faces becoming more
beautiful, purer, gentler, nobler."
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
Influence
AUGUST 3
"Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles that propagate
themselves are the beautiful type of all influence."
EMERSON.
"It requires but little knowledge of society and history to assure us of
the strong permeating invisible influence upon society at large of any
body of men of clear thought, strong conviction, and disciplined
conduct. At once many things respond to the magnetism; many are put on
their mettle who would not for the world own it: many recognise their
own best things more clearly in the new light shed upon them; there is
instinctive moral competition. Such influences travel fast and far.... I
have always myself believed that the later thought of the Roman
world--the mellow stoicism of Aurelius and Epictetus in the second
century, with its strong unexplained instinct for a personal and
fatherly God, with its gentle and self-denying ethics, shews the
tincture of the influence diffused through the thoughts and prayers, the
quiet conversations or the dropped words and overheard phrases--or the
bearing and countenance of a slave here or a friend there, known or
perhaps not known to belong to that strange new body of people with
their foolish yet arresting faith, with their practices everywhere
spoken against yet of such pure and winning charm--who bore the name of
the Nazarene."
_The Church's Failures and the Work of Christ_, Bishop TALBOT.
Friendship
AUGUST 4
"We should ever have it fixed in our memories, that by the characters of
those whom we choose for our friends, our own is likely to be formed,
and will certainly be judged of by the world. We ought, therefore, to be
slow and cautious in contracting intimacy; but when a virtuous
friendship is once established, we must ever consider it as a sacred
engagement."
BLAIR.
"Might I give counsel to any young hearer, I would say unto him: Try to
frequent the company of your betters. In books and life is the most
wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life
is that. Note what the great men admired--they admired great things;
narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."
THACKERAY.
"Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm
and constant."
SOCRATES.
Friendship
AUGUST 5
"There is nothing so bad for man or woman as to live always with their
inferiors. It is a truth so important, that one might well wish to turn
aside a moment and urge it, even in its lower aspects, upon the young
people who are just making their associations and friendships. Many a
temptation of laziness or pride induces us to draw towards those who do
not know as much or are not in some way as strong as we are. It is a
smaller tax upon our powers to be in their society. But it is bad for
us. I am sure that I have known men, intellectually and morally very
strong, the whole development of whose intellectual and moral life has
suffered and been dwarfed, because they have only accompanied with their
inferiors, because they have not lived with men greater than themselves.
Whatever else they lose, they surely must lose some culture of humility.
If I could choose a young man's companions, some should be weaker than
himself, that he might learn patience and charity; many should be as
nearly as possible his equals, that he might have the full freedom of
friendship; but most should be stronger than he was, that he might for
ever be thinking humbly of himself and be tempted to higher things."
PHILLIPS BROOKS.
Friendship
AUGUST 6
"For good or evil a man's moral and spiritual outlook is altered by the
outlook of his comrade. It is inevitable, and in all true comradeship it
makes for truth, and generosity, and freedom. It is an incalculable
enlargement of human responsibility, because it constitutes us, in a
measure, guardians each of the other's soul. And yet, it is never the
suppression of a weak individuality by a strong one. That is not even
true discipleship, but spiritual tyranny. What the play of two
personalities brings about is a fuller, deeper self-realisation on
either side. The experience of comradeship, with all the new knowledge
and insight that it brings into a life, can leave no ideal unchanged,
but the change is not of the nature of a substitution, but of continuous
growth. It is not mental or moral bondage, but deliverance from both.
"And it is the deliverance from bondage to ourselves. It is our refuge
from pride. More than all else, comradeship teaches us to walk humbly
with God. For while God's trivial gifts may allow us to grow vain and
self-complacent, His great gifts, if we once recognise them, make us own
our deep unworthiness, and bow our heads in unspeakable gratitude. We
may have rated our deserts high, and taken flattery as our just due; we
may have competed for the world's prizes, and been filled with gratified
ambition at securing them. But however high we rate ourselves, in the
hour in which the soul is conscious of its spiritual comrades, we know
that God's great infinite gift of human love is something we have never
earned, could never earn by merit or achievement, by toil, or prayer, or
fasting. It has come to us straight out of the heart of the eternal
Fatherhood; and all our pride and vanity fall away, and our lives come
again to us as the lives of little children."
_Comradeship_, MAY KENDALL.
Friendship
AUGUST 7
"Friendship is a plant which cannot be forced. True friendship is no
gourd, springing in a night and withering in a day."
CHARLOTTE BRONTE.
"Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of
God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of
going out of one's self, and appreciating whatever is noble and loving
in another."
THOMAS HUGHES.
"Friendship cannot be permanent unless it becomes spiritual. There must
be fellowship in the deepest things of the soul, community in the
highest thoughts, sympathy with the best endeavours."
HUGH BLACK.
Friendship
AUGUST 8
"Our chief want in life is, somebody who shall make us do what we can.
This is the service of a friend."
EMERSON.
"The end of friendship is for aid and comfort through all the passages
of life and death."
EMERSON.
"Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner of his joy. A friend
shares my sorrow, and makes it but a moiety; but he swells my joy, and
makes it double."
JEREMY TAYLOR.
"He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need.
If thou sorrow, he will weep.
If thou wake, he cannot sleep.
Thus in every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part."
SHAKESPEARE.
Friendship
AUGUST 9
"To begin with, how can life be worth living, to use the words of
Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual
good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one
to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to
yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one
to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear
if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than
yourself."
CICERO.
"Comradeship is one of the finest facts, and one of the strongest forces
in life."
HUGH BLACK.
"... All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest
thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our
nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity."
CICERO.
Friendship
August 10
"Beware lest thy friend learn to tolerate one frailty of thine, and so
an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love."
THOREAU.
"That he had 'a genius for friendship' goes without saying, for he was
rich in the humility, the patience and the powers of trust, which such a
genius implies. Yet his love had, too, the rarer and more strenuous
temper which requires 'the common aspiration,' is jealous for a friend's
growth, and has the nerve to criticise. It is the measure of what he
felt friendship to be, that he has defined religion in the terms of it."
_Of Henry Drummond_, GEORGE ADAM SMITH.
"All men have their frailties, and whoever looks for a friend without
imperfection will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves
notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like
manner."
CYRUS.
Friendship
AUGUST 11
"... For instance, it often happens that friends need remonstrance and
even reproof. When these are administered in a kindly spirit they ought
to be taken in good part. But somehow or other there is truth in what my
friend Terence says in his Andria: 'Compliance gets us friends, plain
speaking hate.'
"Plain speaking is a cause of trouble, if the result of it is
resentment, which is poison to friendship; but compliance is really the
cause of much more trouble, because by indulging his faults it lets a
friend plunge into headlong ruin. But the man who is most to blame is he
who resents plain speaking and allows flattery to egg him on to his
ruin.... If we remonstrate, it should be without bitterness; if we
reprove, there should be no word of insult.... But if a man's ears are
so closed to plain speaking that he cannot bear to hear the truth from a
friend, we may give him up in despair. This remark of Cato's, as so many
of his did, shews great acuteness: 'There are people who owe more to
bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often
speak the truth, the latter never.' Besides, it is a strange paradox
that the recipients of advice should feel no annoyance where they ought
to feel it, and yet feel so much where they ought not. They are not at
all vexed at having committed a fault, but very angry at being reproved
for it."
CICERO.
"Men of character like to hear of their faults; the other class do not."
EMERSON.
"Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or rather,
have made it desired."
_Amiel's Journal._
Friendship
AUGUST 12
"The friendship of Jesus was not checked or foiled by the discovery of
faults or blemishes in those whom He had taken into His life. Even in
our ordinary human relations we do not know what we are engaging to do
when we become the friend of another. 'For better for worse, for richer
for poorer, in sickness and in health,' runs the marriage covenant. The
covenant in all true friendship is the same. We pledge our friend
faithfulness, with all that faithfulness includes. We know not what
demands upon us this sacred compact may make in years to come.
Misfortune may befall our friend, and he may require our aid in many
ways. Instead of being a help he may become a burden. But friendship
must not fail, whatever its cost may be. When we become the friend of
another, we do not know what faults and follies in him closer
acquaintance may disclose to our eyes. But here, again, ideal friendship
must not fail."
_Personal Friendships of Jesus_, J. R. MILLER.
"For he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast,
Himself the judge and jury, and himself
The prisoner at the bar, ever condemned."
TENNYSON.
Friendship
AUGUST 13
"Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces.
Consider not what they did, but what they intended."
THOREAU.
"What makes us so changeable in our friendships, is our difficulty to
discern the qualities of the soul, and the ease with which we detect
those of the intellect."
"Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place."
RABBI HILLEL.
"Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms
together."
Friendship
AUGUST 14
"There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each
so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why
either should be first named. One is Truth ... the other is Tenderness."
EMERSON.
"The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and
trust.... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I
may think aloud."
EMERSON.
"People do not sufficiently remember that in every relation of life, as
in the closest one of all, they ought to take one another 'for better
for worse.' That, granting the tie of friendship, gratitude, esteem, be
strong enough to have existed at all, it ought, either actively or
passively, to exist for ever. And seeing we can at best know our
neighbour, companion, or friend as little, as alas! we often find he
knoweth of us, it behoveth us to trust him with the most patient
fidelity, the tenderest forbearance; granting unto all his words and
actions that we do not understand, the utmost limit of faith that common
sense and Christian justice will allow. Nay, these failing, is there not
left Christian charity? which being past believing and hoping, still
endureth all things."
Friendship
AUGUST 15
"Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it
means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we
share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to
make our own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of
solicitude."
_Amiel's Journal._
"Everything that is mine, even to my life, I may give to one I love, but
the secret of my friend is not mine to give."
PHILIP SIDNEY.
"When true friends part they should lock up one another's secrets and
change the keys."
FELTHAM.
Friendship
AUGUST 16
"So true it is that nature abhors isolation, and ever leans upon
something as a stay and support; and this is found in its most pleasing
form in our closest friend."
CICERO.
"And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this
certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the
future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend a
man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if
his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend's
strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second life after
his own is finished."
CICERO.
"In distress a friend
Comes like a calm to the toss'd mariner."
EURIPIDES.
Friendship
AUGUST 17
"A man only understands what is akin to something already existing in
himself."
_Amiel's Journal._
"There are some to whom we speak almost in a language of our own, with
the confidence that all our broken hints are recognised with a thrill of
kinship, and our half-uttered thoughts discerned and shared: some with
whom we need not cramp our meaning into the dead form of an explicit
accuracy, and with whom we can forecast that we shall walk together in
undoubting sympathy even over tracks of taste and belief which we may
never yet have touched."
_Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief_, Bishop PAGET.
"Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud."
ADDISON.
Friendship
AUGUST 18