Some one once described the difference between good breeding and bad
breeding as that between a man who works as a matter of course to
conquer his limitations--and a man to whom his limitations are
inevitable.
There is spiritual good breeding and natural good breeding. The
first comes from the achievement of personal character--the second
is born with us--to use or misuse as we prefer.
It is a happy thing to realize that our freedom from bondage to
circumstances, and our loving, intelligent freedom from other
people, is the true spiritual good breeding which gives vitality to
every action of our lives, and brings us into more real and closer
touch with our fellow-men. Courtesy is alive when it has genuine
love of all human nature at the root of it--it is dead when it is
merely a matter of good form.
In so far as I know, the habit of such freedom and good breeding
cannot be steadily sustained without an absolute, conscious
dependence upon the Lord God Almighty.
End of Project Gutenberg's Nerves and Common Sense, by Annie Payson Call
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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