June 30

“We live in an age when there is a fashion in philanthropy as well as a fashion in religion. Do we atone by an interest in large questions – a common fault – for a failure towards lesser claims? We live in an age when, at all costs, men seek for personal aggrandisement, or for the intoxication of passing pleasure. We, each of us, must see to it lest our ingrained selfishness is destroying the ‘diligence’ of the Christian. Can it be that our life is being frittered away in nothings when men around us are in the direst need? Can it be that we occupy ourselves with ‘great interests’ when unworthy suspicions, or cruel slanders, or petty unkindnesses, or thoughtless acts of neglect, are emptying the lives that lie within our arm-sweep of the power of happiness and the influence for improvement that are entrusted to us to use. Let us see to it. every day in every life gives social opportunities, and therefore responsibilities at the last.”

KNOX LITTLE

“Do not dare to live without some clear intention toward which your living shall be bent. Mean to be something with all your might. . . . Do not dare to think that a Child of God can worthily work out his career, or worthily serve God’s other children, unless he does both in the love and fear of God their father.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

June 29

“A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; . . . Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught; - Our improvement is in proportion to our purpose; - We hardly ever manage to get completely rid of one fault, and do not set our hearts on daily improvement; - Always place a definite purpose before thee; get the habit of mastering thine inclination.”

“The great clock at Westminster booms out its chimes to the tune of

‘Lord, thro’ this hour
Be Thou my Guide,
So by Thy power
No foot shall slide.’”

Archdeacon FARRAR

“Do as well as you can to-day, and perhaps to-morrow you may be able to do better.”

NEWTON

June 28

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers
‘Life is but an empty dream!’
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

“Not enjoyment and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than today.

“Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living present!
Heart within and God o’erhead!

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time; -

“Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.”

LONGFELLOW

June 27

“Life never seems so clear and easy as when the heart is beating faster at the sight of some generous, self-risking deed. We feel no doubt then what is the highest prize the soul can win; we almost believe in our power to attain it.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“It is true of a human life that it finds its highest enjoyment n the consciousness of progress. Our times of greatest pleasure are when we have won some higher peak of difficulty, trodden under foot some evil, refused some pleasant temptation for truth’s sake, been swept out of ourselves by love, and felt day by day in such high labours so sure a growth of moral strength within us, that we cannot conceive of an end of growth.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“Live rightly, so shalt thou acquire
Unknown capacities of joy.”

C. PATMORE

June 26

“’Tis not for man to trifle! Life is brief,
And sin is here;
Our age is but the falling of a leaf,
A dropping tear.
We have no time to sport away the hours,
All must be earnest in a world like ours.

“Not many lives, but only one have we,
One, only one,
How sacred should that one life ever be,
That narrow span!
Day after day filled up with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil.

“Our being is no shadow of thin air,
No vacant dream,
No fable of the things that never were
But only seem;
‘Tis full of meaning as of mystery,
Though strange and solemn may that meaning be.”

“Duty may regulate the hours of life towards others. Love takes charge of its moments.”

June 25

“It should not seem to be so very wonderful a thing that men should attain to the ability to say ‘I am willing to die’. . . . It seems to me a much better, grander, and nobler thing to say, ‘I am willing and ready to live, right here, to-day, in my circumstances; ready to take up my burden, to carry my load, to do my work, to wait God’s time’.”

M. D. SAVAGE

“We know what strength, what resolution, what scattering of idle doubts, what concentration of aim, come when we once have avowed our choice.
“Numberless temptations are removed by the mere fact that our part is taken.
“The obligation of our cause is upon us.”

Bishop WESTCOTT

“An ideal may seem unattainable, but when it is distinctly acknowledged as the object of aspiration, it will be found close at hand.”

Bishop WESTCOTT

June 24

“Now, believe me, God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best. There is a time when we are not content to be such merchants or doctors, or lawyers, as we see on the dead level or below it. The woman longs to glorify her womanhood as sister, wife or mother. . . . Here is God – God standing silently at the door all day long – God whispering to the soul that to be pure and true is to succeed in life, and whatever we get short of that will burn up like stubble, though the whole world try to save it.”

ROBERT COLLYER

“No dwarfing of your growth in years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in any of your past development, can in the least mar the perfect work that He will accomplish, if you will only put yourselves absolutely in His hands, and let Him have His own way with you.”

H. W. S.

June 23

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues

. . . . .

This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty –
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense,
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

June 22

“I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons), of the jargon, namely, about the ‘rights’ of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon that urges women to do nothing that men can do, merely because they are women, and should be ‘recalled to a sense of their duty as women’, and because ‘this is women’s work, and that is men’s’, and ‘these are the things that women should not do’, which is all assertion and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God’s world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, bot of them, the one just as much as the other, but listening to the ‘what people will say’, to opinion, to the ‘voices from without’? And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without. . . . Go your way straight to God’s work, in simplicity and singleness of heart.”

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

“For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for.”

June 21

“Duties high, noble, silently important as any that can fall to a human creature, duties that, if well discharged, constitute woman in a soft, beautiful, almost sacred way, Queen of the World, and which, by her natural faculties, graces, strength, and weaknesses, are every way indicated as especially hers.”

CARLYLE

“I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

“And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still and bright
With something of an angel light.”

WORDSWORTH

June 20

“There is no sadder or uglier sight in this world than to see the women of a land grasping the ignoble honour, and rejecting the noble; leading the men, whom they should guide into high thought and active sacrifice, into petty slander of gossip, in conversation; and into discussion of dangerous and unhealthy feeling; becoming what men in their frivolous moments wish them to be, instead of making men what men should be; abdicating their true throne over the heart, to grasp at the kingdom over fashion, ceasing to protest against impurity and unbelief, and giving them an underhand encouragement; turning away from their mission to bless, to exhort, to console, that they may struggle through a thousand meannesses into a higher position.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapened Paradise;
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoil’d the bread and spill’d the wine,
Which, spent with due respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine!”

COVENTRY PATMORE

June 19

“ . . . What the woman is to be within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveliness more rare.
“And as within the human heart, there is always set an instinct for all its real duties, an instinct which you cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt, if you withdraw it from its true purpose; - as there is the intense instinct of love, which rightly disciplined, maintains all the sanctities of life, and misdirected, undermines them, and must do either the one or the other; - so there is in the human heart an undistinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, and, misdirected, wrecks them.
“Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of man, and of the heart of woman. God set it there and God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power! For Heaven’s sake, and for Man’s sake, desire it all you can. But what power? That is all the question. . . . Power to heal, to redeem to guide, and to guard. . . .
“Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens?”

RUSKIN

“Power is a gift of God, and may not be laid aside.”

H. MONSELL

June 18

“As long as the women of England refuse to guide and inspire, as long as they forget their nature, and think of pleasure instead of blessing, as long as they shut their ears to the agony of the cities of this land, that they may not be disturbed in their luxury, and literature, and art, so long will men, as they have ever done, take the impulse of their lives from them, and do nothing chivalrous, nothing really self-sacrificing, nothing very noble and persistent, for the blessing of the world.
“The regeneration of society is in the power of the woman, and she turns away from it.
“All future English generations might call her blessed, and she prefers to be called fashionable.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“Men will always be what women make them; if, therefore, you would have men great and virtuous, impress upon the minds of women what greatness and virtue are.”

ROUSSEAU

June 17

June 17

“We want in England – women who will understand and feel what love of country means, and act upon it; who will lose thought of themselves, and their finery, and their pleasures, in a passionate effort to heal the sorrow and to destroy the dishonour, dishonesty, and vice of England; to realise that as mothers, maidens, wives, and sisters, they have but to bid the men of this country to be true, brave, loving, just, honourable, and wise, and they will become so, just as they will become frivolous, base, unloving, ashamed of truth and righteousness, if women are so; to be not content to live only for their own circles, but to take upon their hearts the burden of the poor, the neglected, and the sinful, for whom many now exercise a dainty distant pity and no more.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“We are responsible, not only for doing, but also for leaving undone; else the servant who hid his lord’s talent in the earth would have escaped condemnation.”

Archbishop WHATELY

June 15 and 16

June 15 – 16 [in the original book this was a single long entry running over two date pages]

“All such knowledge should be given her, as may enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men; and yet it should be given, not as knowledge, - not as if it were, or could be, an object for her to know; but only to feel and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many languages or one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger’s tongue. It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted with this science or that; but it is of the highest, that she should be trained in habits of thought, that she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws, and follow at least one path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves for ever children gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little consequence how many positions of cities she knows; or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated persons, - it is not the object of education to turn the woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her whole personality into the history she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination; to apprehend with her fine instincts the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, which the historian too often eclipses by his reasoning and disconnects by his arrangement; it is for her to trace the hidden equities of divine reward and catch sight, through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven-fire that connect error with retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect to that history which is being for ever determined as the moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath; and to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur no ore hereafter. She is to exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the presence of the suffering which is not the less real because shut from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothingness of the proportion which that little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in which God lives and loves; - and solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain of her husband or child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those who have none to love them, - and is ‘for all who are desolate and oppressed.’”

RUSKIN

June 14

“What are the remedies against the absorption in personal life which belongs to women and to men, but also to women more than to men? The first is an education whose aims and extent are wider than at present. Such an education will encourage an habitual reference of life to higher motives than personal ones – even those which belong to the family. It would give and create in the young vivid interest in social questions in England and in foreign lands. It would give such a knowledge of government, and of the history of these countries as to enable the child in after life to enter into those movements which are likely to bear on the progress of mankind. It would give a clear idea of what we mean by mankind and its progress, and an interest in nations and their relations to each other, not only because we have a particular fancy for this or that nation, but because we long for the whole advance of men. It would give some knowledge and love of the great ideas and truths by whose working our mankind is regenerated.”

STOPFORD BROOKE

“The dangers which threaten us will never be averted until there is no single good man or woman in any sphere of life who does not realise the individual’s responsibility for the general condition, and who is not labouring in some direct, definite, self-denying way to rescue those who are perishing from the action of preventable evils.”

Archdeacon FARRAR

June 13

“Women were designed by their nature, elegance, and softness to endear domestic life by man, to make virtue lovely to children, to spread around them order and grace, and to give to society its highest polish.
“No attainments can be above beings whose end and aim it is to accomplish purposes at once so elegant and so salutary; every means should be used to invigorate by principle and culture such native excellence and grace.”

FÉNÉLON

“Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes to eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.”

EMERSON

“Light of any kind invariably throws light upon duty, and if we know anything we are sure to have thereby a clearer notion of right from wrong. The mere awakening of the understanding must awaken the conscience in some degree. You cannot gain more intellectual power without also gaining moral light. Just as the coming of the daylight shows you the beauty of nature at the same moment that it shows you the position surrounding, so, too, even the merest science must reveal in some slight degree the beauty of the will of God.”

Bishop TEMPLE

June 12

“Then learn as much as ever you can about all sorts of things, and so make this world, whilst you have to live in it, a perpetual source of interest and surprise and gratification. That will keep your mind from stagnating. And then get into the way of feeling for other people’s troubles, and doing what you can to help them away, and that will keep your heart from stagnating. You may live until you are five times sixty-five if you can, you will never find the world a bit too weary for you.”

“That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.”

Professor HUXLEY

June 11

“It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds; and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.”

CHANNING

“Be as careful of the books you read as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.”

PAXTON HOOD

June 10

“Read not to contradict nor confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weight and consider.”

BACON

“I would utter a caution against a too exclusive adherence to one class of books. There is certainly a danger of cramping the mind and losing power and sympathy by unfamiliarity with other classes of literature. It is surely well for those who have leisure to make their reading more varied, and to train and cultivate their minds by some little study of history, biography, natural science, and poetry.”

Bishop WALSHAM HOW

“Adjust your proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination – this is perfectly free to every man, but whether that amount be large or small, let it be varied in its kind, and largely varied . . . keep your view of men and things extensive.”

Dr. ARNOLD

June 9

“Culture, for its own sake, is the worst form of self-idolatry. Culture, as the preparation of self for the service of others, is as the preparation of the plot of ground entrusted to us that it may bear a harvest in which many may rejoice.”

Professor GARDINER

“To have the shepherdly genius, to have something of a true shepherd’s eye and hand, is the finest of possessions, and the more we are able to render our knowledge, our acquisitions, and accomplishments, ministerial – ministerial to some of the deeper needs of men – the greater we are.”

“Our knowledge is no blessing to us unless we have learnt to use it well and wisely, and learnt, too, that with it only, life is not complete. If, dealing with the ‘things we see’, we walk hand-in-hand with faith in the unseen, these two shall make life beautiful and blessed.”

CLODD

June 8

“Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”

CICERO

“The responsibility of each man for the working of his intellect must be acknowledged. The sin of mental carelessness or wilfulness must take its place among the sins against which men struggle, and for which they repent.”

PHILLIPS BROOKS

“I am quite sure that it is a most solemn duty to cultivate our understandings to the uttermost, for I have seen the evil moral consequences of fanaticism to a greater degree than I ever expected to see them realised; and I am satisfied that a neglected intellect is far oftener the cause of mischief to a man than a perverted or over-valued one. Men retain their natural quickness and cleverness, while their reason and judgment are allowed to go to ruin, and thus they do work their minds and gain influence, and are pleased at gaining it; but it is the undisciplined mind which they are exercising, instead of one wisely disciplined.”

Dr. ARNOLD

June 7

“Earnest words must needs be spoken
When the warm heart bleeds or burns
With its scorn of wrong, or pity
For the wronged, by turns.

“But, by all thy nature’s weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.

“Know’st thou not all germs of evil
In thy heart await their time?
Not thyself, but God’s restraining
Stays their growth of crime.

“Could’st thou boast, O child of weakness,
O’er the sons of wrong and strife,
Were their strong temptations planted
In thy path of life?”

WHITTIER

“We all have our secret sins; and if we knew ourselves we should not judge each other harshly.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

“Generally speaking, the judging of others is the foul stain of social life.”

Baron BUNSEN

June 6

“Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Though they may gang a kennin’ wrang,
To step aside is human;
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.

“Who made the heart, ‘tis He alone,
Decidedly can try us,
He knows each chord – its various tone,
Each spring – its various bias;
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.”

BURNS

“The practice of putting favourable interpretations on dubious actions is another exercise of the Christ-like spirit of sweetness.”

June 5

“But as an effectual remedy against this fault, (judging others hardly), I would remind thee to occupy thy thoughts with the defects of thine own heart; for thou wilt hourly perceive more and more that thou hast so much to do and work in thyself, and for thyself, as to have neither time nor inclination to attend to the deeds of others.”

SCUPOLI

“Of all spirits, I believe the spirit of judging is the worst. . . Looking for the faults, which I had a secret consciousness were in myself, in other people, and accusing them; instead of looking for their faults in myself, where I should have been sure to find them all, - this, I find, has more hindered my progress in love, and gentleness, and sympathy, than all things else.”

F. D. MAURICE

“It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self, while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

June 4

“It is not the effect of one particular act of injustice that should impress us with so much regret, it is the habit of too great suddenness or hardness in judging. How difficult it is for us to estimate the many ways in which we may be mistaken. When shall we learn to keep the knowledge always present with us that often kindness is our best uprightness, and our truest justice is mercy?”

JEAN INGELOW

“Turn thine eyes unto thyself, and beware thou judge not the deeds of other men. In judging of others a man laboureth in vain, often erreth and easily sinneth; but in judging and examining himself, he always laboureth fruitfully.”

THOMAS à KEMPIS

“While we are coldly discussing a man’s career, sneering at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and labelling his opinions – ‘Evangelical and Narrow’; or, ‘Latitudinarian and Pantheistic’; or, ‘Anglican and Supercilious’ – that man, in his solitude, is, perhaps, shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a hard one, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word, and do the difficult deed.”

GEORGE ELIOT [pen-name of Mary Ann Evans]

June 3

“In speaking of the duty of pleasing others, it will not be necessary to dwell on the ordinary courtesies and lesser kindnesses of our daily living, any further than to observe that none of these things, however trifling, is beneath the notice of a good man, . . . but I mention one thing, because I think that we are most of us apt to be rather deficient in it, and that is in the trying to suit ourselves to the tastes and views of people whose professions or inclinations, or situation in life, differ widely from our own. . . . As a general rule, no man can fall into conversation with another without being able to learn something valuable from him. But in order to get at this benefit there must be something of an accommodating spirit on both sides; each must be ready to hear candidly and to answer fairly; each must try to please the other. We all suffer from the want of acquaintance with the habits and opinions and feelings of different classes of society.”

Dr. ARNOLD

“The wish to speak to the want of another mind assists to clear your own.”

EMERSON