Top 100 John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
#2. 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
#5. 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
#6. Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.
John Lancaster Spalding
#7. 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
#8. If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.
John Lancaster Spalding
#9. 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
#10. Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.
John Lancaster Spalding
#11. Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
John Lancaster Spalding
#12. Care not who is richer or more learned than thou, if none be more generous and loving.
John Lancaster Spalding
#14. 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
#15. Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.
John Lancaster Spalding
#16. In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
John Lancaster Spalding
#17. 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
#19. No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.
John Lancaster Spalding
#20. 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
#21. Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
John Lancaster Spalding
#22. 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
#23. 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
#26. 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
#27. We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
John Lancaster Spalding
#29. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
John Lancaster Spalding
#36. If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?
John Lancaster Spalding
#38. Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
John Lancaster Spalding
#40. The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.
John Lancaster Spalding
#41. Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.
John Lancaster Spalding
#42. The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
John Lancaster Spalding
#44. If thou need money, get it in an honest way by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
John Lancaster Spalding
#48. We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.
John Lancaster Spalding
#51. There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.
John Lancaster Spalding
#52. The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.
John Lancaster Spalding
#53. The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.
John Lancaster Spalding
#54. In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
John Lancaster Spalding
#55. 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
#60. A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
John Lancaster Spalding
#61. 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
#62. It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
John Lancaster Spalding
#65. 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
#66. Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.
John Lancaster Spalding
#67. 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
#68. Our prejudices are like physical infirmities - we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
John Lancaster Spalding
#69. 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
#71. The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.
John Lancaster Spalding
#73. 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
#74. Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
John Lancaster Spalding
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
John Lancaster Spalding
#81. Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
John Lancaster Spalding
#83. When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life's morning.
John Lancaster Spalding
#85. 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
#86. The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
John Lancaster Spalding
#87. It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.
John Lancaster Spalding
#88. It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day, this is the work of genius.
John Lancaster Spalding
#89. If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
John Lancaster Spalding
#90. 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
#91. Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.
John Lancaster Spalding
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.
John Lancaster Spalding
#96. We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.
John Lancaster Spalding
#97. 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
#99. If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
John Lancaster Spalding
#100. 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
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