"I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality." THOREAU. Triviality JANUARY 29 "They that use to employ their Minds too much upon Trifles, commonly make themselves incapable of any Thing that is Serious or Great." LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. "Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord, from whom cometh life; whereby thou mayest receive the strength and power to allay all storms and tempests. That is it which works up into patience, innocency, soberness, into stillness, staidness, quietness up to God, with His power. Therefore mind; that is the word of the Lord God unto thee, that thou mayest feel the authority of God, and thy faith in that, to work down that which troubles thee; for that is it which keeps peace, and brings up the witness in thee, which hath been transgressed, to feel after God with His power and life, who is a God of order and peace." GEORGE FOX. "It is not sin so much as triviality which hides God." _The Service of God_, CANON BARNETT. The Art of being Quiet JANUARY 30 "It is only when we begin to _think_ about life, and how we should live, that the art of being quiet assumes its real value; to the irrational creature it is nothing, to the rational it is much. In the first place, it removes what De Quincey, with his usual grand felicity of expression, calls 'the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.' It is the infinite littleness of details which takes the glory and the dignity from our common life, and which we who value that life for its own sake and for the sake of its great Giver must strive to make finite. "Since unconscious life is not possible to the intellectual adult, as it is to the child--since he cannot go on living without a thought about the nature of his own being, its end and aim--it is good for him to cultivate a habit of repose, that he may think and feel like a man putting away those childish things--the carelessness, the thoughtless joy, 'the tear forgot as soon as shed,' which, however beautiful, because appropriate, in childhood, are not beautiful because not appropriate in mature age. "The art of being quiet is necessary to enable a man to possess his own soul in peace and integrity--to examine himself, to understand what gifts God has endowed him with, and to consider how he may best employ them in the business of the world. This is its universal utility. It is unwholesome activity which requires not repose and thoughtful quiet as its forerunner, and every man should secure some portion of each day for voluntary retirement and repose within himself."