Text of the meditation
Without the right performance of Duty, the higher virtues cannot be known. All duty should be regarded as sacred, and its faithful and unselfish performance should be one of the leading rules of conduct. All personal and selfish considerations should be removed and cast away from the doing of one's duty; and when this is done, Duty ceases to be irksome, and becomes joyful.
Duty is irksome only to one who craves some selfish enjoyment or benefit for themselves. Let the person who is chafing under the irksomeness of their duty look to themselves, and they will find that their wearisomeness proceeds not from the duty itself but from their selfish desire to escape it.
Whoever neglects duty, be it great or small, public or private, neglects Virtue; and whoever in their heart rebels against Duty rebels against Virtue. The virtuous person concentrates their mind on the perfect doing of their own duty.
James Allen (1864–1912), Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year (1913) – public-domain text, gently modernised.
The original 1913 text is in the public domain.
