――‘I have confessed to myself a fresh thing to be on my guard against. Every now and then I keep feeling anxious that by bringing myself into strict command, I may acquire a commanding air and manner, and am in a hurry to get rid of the punishment of my former weakness. I sometimes try to assume a dignified face as I meet men, and am never content to be treated as a shilly-shally fellow. I must not care the least, or ever indulge a thought, about the impression I make on others;[16] but make myself _be_ what I would, and let the _seeming_ take its course; or, rather, be glad of slights, as from the Lord. This will be a hard struggle. O Lord, give me strength to go through with it!’ ――‘I felt as if I have got rid of a great weight from my mind, in having given up the notion of regulating my particular actions, by the sensible tendency I could perceive in them to bring me towards my τὸ καλόν. I had always a mistrust in this motive; and it seems quite a happiness to yield the direction of myself to a Higher Power Who has said: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”’ ――‘It seems to me a great help towards making myself indifferent to present things, to conjure up past events, and distant places and people before me: things that happened at Eton, or Ottery, or in the very early times of childhood. I felt again to-day as if … the secret world of new pleasures and wishes to which I am trying to gain admittance, is a mere fancy. I must be careful to check high[17] feelings, [as] they are certain to become offences in a day or two, and must regulate my practice by faith, and a steady imitation of great examples: in hopes that, by degrees, what I now have only faint and occasional glimpses of may be the settled objects on which my imagination reposes, and that I may be literally hid in the presence of the Lord.’ ――‘I might not indeed be too penitent, but penitent in a wrong way. Abstinences and self-mortifications may themselves be a sort of intemperance: a food to my craving after some sign that I am altering. They ought not to be persevered in, farther than as they are instrumental to a change of character in things of real importance: … how hard it is to keep a pure motive for anything!… I will refrain, rather, by forcing myself to talk, and attend to the wants of others [at table] than by constantly thinking of myself.’