Daily life

“ When one remembers how full life is of appeals to the active faculties of man, and how the exertion of each of these brings its correlative satisfaction; how the world, in the first place, needs the daily labour of the majority of our race ”

“ And we see them, on all sides, daily and hourly, refusing to enter it, sinking back into the ranks of the dwellers in physical life, clinging to the consciousnesses they have experienced and understand. ”

“ Throughout these tales the plan has been to present a picture of ordinary life, with its small daily events, its pleasures, and its trials, so as to draw out its capabilities of being turned to the best account. ”

“ Draw together for mutual support, and face those imperatives of prayer and work which we have seen to be the condition of the fullest living-out of our existence. Fix and keep a reasonably balanced daily rule. ”

“ Watch each of your actions, when in society, that all the habits which you contract there may be useful and good ones. Like flakes of snow that fall unperceived upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. ”

“ Each day of your life will prove that you have decided, and are acting upon the decision you make on this momentous point. Your conduct in society proves it, your behaviour in your family, every thought which occupies your mind, every wish you breathe, every plan you form, every pleasure you enjoy, every pain you suffer—all prove whether it is your object to live for yourself, or for others.
Again, is it your aim to live for this world only, or for eternity? ”

“ I have preached upon this—that to each individual man, woman and child, there comes—there must and will come a time, when material success, health, wealth and happiness are non-important, and when moral issues, when duty, character and conduct are the great essential facts of life to be met and grappled with. ”

“ Those perpetual cares in which you have passed your days, those trifling cares and thoughts for every-day necessities, which are so opposite to your own nature, are they then so pleasant, so captivating? ”

“ Thy people,... when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to plough another; and, if the day were not enough, I have seen them plough by moonlight. What is their life to ours,—the life that is as naught to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! But we live in the present. ”

“ So little change has been made in the way of living, that you would feel as if you were going on with your usual occupations and conversation amongst us. We laugh and talk, and enjoy the good of every day, which is more than sufficient. ”

“ I do not mean the actions which, in the broad light of day, lie in the ordinary routine of life, but those more important circumstances which are not seen, but make up, and help to weave the skein of each man's destiny. ”

“ The men that you meet with in all their variety of intellectual and moral nature, the political and social forces at work around you, the tendencies and aims of current speculation, will furnish to the well-trained mind, food for constant thought—for such thought as may elevate and brace the whole inner life by keeping it in perpetual contact with what is real and enduring beneath the shows of the fleeting hour. ”

“ But whether on week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old age, there are moments, rare though they be, yet for all that the most critical moments of our life, when the old simple questions of humanity return to us in all their intensity, and we ask ourselves, What are we? ”

“ And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense. ”

“ They talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit and the drinking-habit, but not of the abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit. But the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,—practical, emotional, and intellectual,—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be. ”

“ If we watch through a single day we shall doubtless discover hundreds of opportunities of both doing and receiving good that we have, perhaps, hitherto passed by with indifference, and by diligent assiduity in seeking for and embracing these we shall be prepared to encounter the fiercer storms of life that may await us, or to take advantage of future opportunities that may offer for our good. ”

“ The important influence which this power of endurance or self-control will have upon your later life, you can not as yet fully estimate, though you may perhaps have some idea of it. Important, indeed, will its influence prove in the family circle, in your intercourse with your neighbors, in the community, in business, and in public life when you are called upon to take an active share in political affairs. ”

“ First, a healthy body; second, an active mind in sympathy with the past, the present, and the future; thirdly, occupation fit for a healthy body and an active mind; and fourthly, a beautiful world to live in.
These are the conditions of life which the refined man of all ages has set before him as the thing above all others to be attained. ”

“ Great delicacy in the development of character, and a subtle power of self-analysis are conspicuous in ‘A Life for a Life,‘ while the purity of its religious views, and the elevation--the grandeur, indeed--of its dominating sentiments, render its influences in every sense healthy and invigorating."--The Press. ”

“ Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work, Life in day-tight compartments. ”

“ The exercises may be very simple—dropping for a time an intensely interesting book at the most thrilling page of the story; jumping out of bed at the first moment of waking; walking home when one is perfectly able to do so, but when the temptation is to take a car; talking to some disagreeable person and trying to make the conversation pleasant. These daily exercises in moral discipline will have a wondrous tonic effect on man’s whole moral nature. ”

“ Crowning these and transcending them in importance are the supreme sentiments and ideals of life, which cannot properly be regarded as habits; they are sympathy, love, faith, reverence for religious convictions, and the ideal of freedom or liberty.
Society itself could not endure but for the stability which habits afford. ”

“ You can change the setting of your mental stage from portentous gloom to sun-lit assurance. You can concentrate your thought upon the useful, [Pg 63] the helpful and the cheerful, ignore the useless and annoying, and make your life a life of hope and joy, of promise and fulfilment. ”

“ How far you will be able to look back to this day in the evening of life with satisfaction and pride, will depend on yourselves and on the way in which you will work and conduct yourselves, and on the aims and ends by which you will direct and sustain your energies. ”

“ Yet in hundreds of fœtid and pestilential dens a thousand and one articles of every-day use for the personal comfort or gratification of every section of the community and for every period of life are made. ”

“ I want to help YOU to form the habit of thinking over each day's activities in the quiet, [Pg 13] relaxed, uncolored, unprejudiced, secluded environment of your home. When the day's work is over, spend fifteen or twenty minutes each evening in seclusion, and with closed eyes, size yourself up. Think over your daily round and the work you are doing. Are you getting the best out of yourself? Or are you plodding along aimlessly, scattering your energy in a haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion that benefits nobody? Are you growing, or are you standing still? ”

“ After this, few find any time to arrange, and make use of, the mass of elementary knowledge they have acquired; and fewer still have either leisure or taste for the inelegant, every-day duties of life. ”

“ But the demands of civilized life insist upon a time and place. Business, etiquette, opportunity, and a thousand and one excuses stand continually in the way, and nature's call is put off to a more convenient time and place. ”

“ We must begin to build up the ornamental part of life—its pleasures, bodily and mental, scientific and artistic, social and individual—on the basis of work undertaken willingly and cheerfully, with the consciousness of benefiting ourselves and our neighbours by it. ”

“ Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawful and faithful guides, in most things that relate solely to this life; and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence. ”

“ So vastly do the circumstances of our daily and hourly lives, the atmosphere of the society which we meet, the tone of the books and newspapers which we read, mould every thought which we think and modify every view which we take of the occurrences which surround us, that it is all but an impossibility to judge how those best known to us, or how even we ourselves, would think or speak or act in a set of circumstances widely different from those in which our actual experience has been cast. ”

“ Carry the Universal Life with you as much as possible into your everyday life. It belongs there as much as anywhere, and will prove to be a tower of strength and refuge to you in the perplexing situations of your busy life. ”

“ And thus, also, with men of your own age and your own rank in life; in all the little engagements and appointments, whether of business or of pleasure, which occur in the common intercourse of society, endeavour still to maintain the habit of punctuality. As every man wishes to have the character of being true to his word, so it will be to your credit to have the character of being true to your engagements, whether those engagements relate to great matters or to small. ”

“ So just take one day at a time and do the best you can with that day — that's all that is expected of you. Each day that you live, you can be earning your way to a better place — a better life. But you must do the earning yourself ”

“ Speech and silence, wisdom and folly, truth and falsehood, friendship and enmity, wealth and poverty, industry and idleness, youth and age, moderation and excess, are all pressed into the service; even the divers occupations of life have their varying lessons, and to these we now give attention. ”

“ They will observe that, though many things have been said about the life of the Spirit, not a great deal seems to have been said, at any rate directly, about the second half of the title—the life of to-day—and especially about those very important aspects of our modern active life which are resumed in the word Social. ”

“ No doubt we are both familiar with the small conventionalities of life, but on such a day as this, and with such a glorious air outside, and such a unique framework of society—everything delightfully pagan—scruples worthy only of small consideration at any time should be thrown aside. ”

“ To reorganise that part of us which is independent of bodily sustenance and health, which lives on spiritual commodities—the part of us including ambition, ideal, sympathy, and all that I have called ideas? ”

“ And taste the blessings of the vernal day;
While social joys, and friendly, intervene
To chase the gloomy cares of life away. I wish not to abandon society, nor to resign the pleasures which it affords ”

“ In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" ”

“ Say what you will there is no other form of outing that makes possible, within sight of conventional life and labor, such days and nights of utter freedom, health, natural beauty, and manly enjoyment. ”

“ They would offer its would-be victims, such a tempting array of the meanings, purposes and opportunities, for gaining wisdom, which may crown every rightly conducted, harmoniously environed life; making it so busy, so absorbing, and so happy ”

“ Now, in the earliest days of your wedded life, before other cares engross your time and thoughts, you have the opportunity to make home a word of sacred meaning, to learn its true nature yourself, and to gather around it associations that shall be lasting, and a safeguard through life. ”

“ May we not welcome, as at least a step in the right direction, a change in our conventional habits, which may extend, though in ever so small a degree, the region of common thoughts and aims, common hopes and disappointments, common joys and common sorrows? ”

“ I already said something of this in speaking of the constructive impulse, and I must not repeat myself. Moreover, you fully realize, I am sure, how important for life,—for the moral tone of life, quite apart from definite practical pursuits,—is this sense of readiness for emergencies which a man gains through early familiarity and acquaintance with the world of material things. ”

“ For the reason already stated, a sample only of the daily labour will be given. It may be as well first to bestow a few words upon the men; for, in the long run, our fellow beings are the powerful factors, for good or ill, in all our worldly enterprises. ”