Doing Your Best

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 23, 1911

“I did the best I knew,” protested the dressmaker’s apprentice, when she was reprimanded for a piece of poor work, that ruined a beautiful dress and vexed a valuable customer. “I don’t see what she’s blaming me for.”

“I’m not blaming you for doing the best you know how,” said the employer; “I’m blaming you for not knowing any better. You mean well, but good intentions aren’t enough to carry on the dress-making business.”

They aren’t enough in any business. It is an old proverb that good intentions pave a place of very disreputable character. “He meant well,” is about the poorest thing one can say of a person, short of actual detraction, unless we except that other phrase of mild apology: “He did the best he knew how.” Whenever you hear either of these, you know at once that it is a case of failure on somebody’s part to do the right thing at the right moment; and usually, if you look closely enough, there was fault behind the failure. To do the best we know is not enough when we might know better.— Selected.