Character and Conduct Part 51

Lord AVEBURY.

The Essentials of Happiness

NOVEMBER 8

"We weigh ourselves down with burdens of sorrow which are the results of our selfish thoughts and selfish desires; and every one of these burdens lessens our power to live righteously in ourselves, and to live usefully for others."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

"When you find yourself overpowered, as it were by melancholy, the best way is to go out, and do something kind to somebody or other."

_Letters of Spiritual Counsel_, KEBLE.

"The grand essentials of happiness are, something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."

CHALMERS.

"Happiness is easy when we have learnt to renounce."

MME. DE STAeL.

Unrest

NOVEMBER 9

"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender."

_Amiel's Journal._

"What are the chief causes of _Unrest_? If you know yourself, you will answer Pride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past years of your life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come at lengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the petty friction of our everyday life with one another, the jar of business or of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of our ambition, the crossing of our will, the taking down of our conceit, which make inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointed hopes, unsatisfied selfishness--these are the old, vulgar, universal sources of man's unrest."

_Pax Vobisc.u.m_, HENRY DRUMMOND.

Rest

NOVEMBER 10

"Now, what is the first step towards the winning of that rest? It is the giving up of self-will and the receiving of G.o.d's will as our own--and what that means is clear. It is to make our life at one with G.o.d's character, with justice and purity, with truth and love, with mercy and joy. It is the surrender of our own pleasure and the making of G.o.d's desire for us the master of our life. That is the first step--a direction of the soul to G.o.d. The second has to do with mankind. It is the replacing of all self-love by the love of our fellow-men; a direction of the soul to G.o.d through man.

"These two ways are in reality one; and there is no other way, if we search the whole world over, in which we may attain rest. Simple as it sounds, it is the very last way many of us seek. We fight against this truth, and it has to be beaten into us by pain. Clear as it seems, it is a secret which is as difficult to discover as the Elixir of Life, but it is so difficult because we do not will to discover it."

_The Gospel of Joy_, STOPFORD BROOKE.

The Duty of Happiness

NOVEMBER 11

"I cannot think but that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness of Duty."

Lord AVEBURY.

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."

d.i.c.kENS.

"Half the world is on the wrong scent in the pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others.

It consists in giving and in serving others."

HENRY DRUMMOND.

Discontent

NOVEMBER 12

"He or she that is idle, be they of what condition they will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy--let them have all things in abundance and felicity that heart can wish and desire,--all contentment--so long as he, or she, or they are idle, they shall never be pleased, never well in mind or body, but weary still, sickly still, vexed still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended with the world, with every object, wis.h.i.+ng themselves gone or dead, or else carried away with some foolish phantasy or other."

BURTON.

"We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves. The consciousness of wrong-doing makes us irritable, and our heart in its cunning quarrels with what is outside it, in order that it may deafen the clamour within."

_Amiel's Journal._

"Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig."

MARCUS AURELIUS.

Self-centred People

NOVEMBER 13

"It is self-centred people that are lonely--the richer the gift, the richer the giver. No one was ever the worse for giving."

F. F. MONTReSOR.

"Misanthropy is always traceable to some vicious experience or imperception--to some false reading in the lore of right and wrong, or it proceeds from positive defects in ourselves, from a departure from things simple and pure, whereby we forfeit happiness without losing the sense of the proper basis on which it rests; yet even thus perverted by the prejudices of the world, we still find a soothing pleasure in contemplating that happiness which belongs to simplicity and virtue."

ACTON.