Top 100 John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
#1. If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
John Lancaster Spalding
#3. Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom.
John Lancaster Spalding
#6. We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
John Lancaster Spalding
#7. Our prejudices are like physical infirmities - we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
John Lancaster Spalding
#8. What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.
John Lancaster Spalding
#9. Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.
John Lancaster Spalding
#10. It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
John Lancaster Spalding
#11. To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one's self the ill will of many.
John Lancaster Spalding
#12. A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
John Lancaster Spalding
#17. If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
John Lancaster Spalding
#18. In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
John Lancaster Spalding
#19. The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.
John Lancaster Spalding
#20. The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.
John Lancaster Spalding
#21. If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
John Lancaster Spalding
#23. A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.
John Lancaster Spalding
#24. The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.
John Lancaster Spalding
#25. The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.
John Lancaster Spalding
#26. Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul this is the miser's curse this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.
John Lancaster Spalding
#27. There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
John Lancaster Spalding
#28. Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.
John Lancaster Spalding
#29. Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry.
John Lancaster Spalding
#30. The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.
John Lancaster Spalding
#33. Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
John Lancaster Spalding
#35. There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
John Lancaster Spalding
#36. To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.
John Lancaster Spalding
#37. As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought.
John Lancaster Spalding
#40. A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.
John Lancaster Spalding
#41. The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.
John Lancaster Spalding
#42. Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
John Lancaster Spalding
#43. As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
John Lancaster Spalding
#45. There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
John Lancaster Spalding
#47. Care not who is richer or more learned than thou, if none be more generous and loving.
John Lancaster Spalding
#48. Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
John Lancaster Spalding
#49. Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.
John Lancaster Spalding
#50. To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.
John Lancaster Spalding
#51. As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.
John Lancaster Spalding
#52. Dislike of another's opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.
John Lancaster Spalding
#55. When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all.
John Lancaster Spalding
#56. As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.
John Lancaster Spalding
#60. If thou need money, get it in an honest way by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
John Lancaster Spalding
#62. The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
John Lancaster Spalding
#63. The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.
John Lancaster Spalding
#64. We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.
John Lancaster Spalding
#65. Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
John Lancaster Spalding
#67. We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
John Lancaster Spalding
#68. Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.
John Lancaster Spalding
#69. If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
John Lancaster Spalding
#70. What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.
John Lancaster Spalding
#72. Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.
John Lancaster Spalding
#74. Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
John Lancaster Spalding
#76. A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
John Lancaster Spalding
#77. Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.
John Lancaster Spalding
#80. Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.
John Lancaster Spalding
#81. If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
John Lancaster Spalding
#82. In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
John Lancaster Spalding
#85. He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.
John Lancaster Spalding
#86. States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.
John Lancaster Spalding
#87. Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?
John Lancaster Spalding
#88. It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.
John Lancaster Spalding
#90. If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.
John Lancaster Spalding
#91. The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.
John Lancaster Spalding
#92. When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.
John Lancaster Spalding
#93. The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.
John Lancaster Spalding
#94. It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.
John Lancaster Spalding
#96. As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.
John Lancaster Spalding
#97. The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.
John Lancaster Spalding
#98. Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.
John Lancaster Spalding
#100. As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.
John Lancaster Spalding
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