January 16

“Endless controversies have stormed, and are still storming, around that name which He so significantly and emphatically appropriated – ‘The Son of Man’. But from amid all the controversy that veils it, one fact, clear, sharp, and unchallenged, stands out as the very life and seal of His human greatness – ‘He pleased not Himself.’ By every act He did, and every word He spoke, and every pain He bore, He put away from Him happiness and the aim and end of man. He reduced it to its true position, of a possible accessory and issue of man’s highest fulfilment of life - an issue, the contemplation of which might be of some avail as the being first awoke to its nobler capabilities, but which, the more the life went on towards realisation, passed the more away from conscious regard.”

J. C. BROWN, from Ethics of George Eliot

“God has ordained that happiness, like every other good thing, should cost us something: He has willed that it should be a moral achievement, and no an accident.”

DE GASPARIN