Читать книгу A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies - Mrs. (Anna) Jameson - Страница 48

Goethe used to say, that while intellectual attainment is progressive, it is difficult to be as good when we are old, as we were when young. Dr. Johnson has expressed the same thing.

Then are we to assume, that to do good effectively and wisely is the privilege of age and experience? To be good, through faith in goodness, the privilege of the young.

To preserve our faith in goodness with an extended knowledge of evil, to preserve the tenderness of our pity after long contemplation of pain, and the warmth of our charity after long experience of falsehood, is to be at once good and wise—to understand and to love each other as the angels who look down upon us from heaven.

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

I observe, that in our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.