—­Bishop Wilberforce.

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In speaking of the duty of pleasing others, it will not be necessary to dwell on the ordinary courtesies and lesser kindnesses of our daily living, any further than to observe that none of these things, however trifling, is beneath the notice of a good man, ... but I mention one thing, because I think that we are most of us apt to be rather deficient in it, and that is in the trying to suit ourselves to the tastes and views of persons whose professions or inclinations, or situation in life, differ widely from our own....  As a general rule, no man can fall into conversation with another without being able to learn something valuable from him.  But in order to get at this benefit there must be something of an accommodating spirit on both sides; each must be ready to hear candidly and to answer fairly; each must try to please the other.  We all suffer from the want of acquaintance with the habits and opinions and feelings of different classes of society.

—­Dr. Arnold.

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If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live.  The number of people who have taken out judges’ patents for themselves is very large in any society.  Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism.  It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope.  But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

Let not familiarity swallow up old courtesy.  Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs.  There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous.  You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly to your associates, but not less courteously than to strangers.

—­Helps.

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Much of the sorrow of life 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 pin pricks in conversation, are all forms of deliberate unkindness, and are all evidences of an ill-conditioned nature.