January 20

The Lord taketh pleasure In His people: He will beautify the meek with salvation. — Ps 149:4

Long listening to Thy words,
My voice shall catch Thy tone,
And, locked in Thine, my hand shall grow
All loving like Thy own.
—B. T.

It is not in words explicable, with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. For there is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features; neither on them only, but on the whole body the moral and intellectual faculties have operation, for all the movements and gestures, however slight, are different in their modes according to the mind that governs them—and on the gentleness and decision of right feeling follows grace of actions, and, through continuance of this, grace of form.
—J. RUSKIN.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
—R. W. EMERSON.