Amiel's Journal.
APRIL 29
"Every man has his faults, his failings, peculiarities, eccentricities. Every one of us finds himself crossed by such failings of others, from hour to hour. And if he were to resent them all, or even notice all, life would be intolerable. If for every outburst of hasty temper, and for every rudeness that wounds us in our daily path, we were to demand an apology, require an explanation, or resent it by retaliation, daily intercourse would be impossible. The very science of social life consists in that gliding tact which avoids contact with the sharp angularities of character, which does not argue about such things, does not seek to adjust or cure them all, but covers them, as if it did not see."
Frederick W. Robertson.
"If you would have a happy family life, remember two things,—in matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current."
APRIL 30
"Much of the sorrow of life, however, springs from the accumulation, day by day and year by year, of little trials—a letter written in less than courteous terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea, the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain of kindliness. Our social insolences, our irritating manners, our censorious judgment, our venomous letters, our pinpricks in conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all evidences of an ill-conditioned nature."
The Homely Virtues, Dr. John Watson.