Spalding Quotes

#1. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#2. When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#3. I was not able to understand how it could be right to pay an actor, or a singer, or an instrumentalist for entertaining the public and wrong to pay a ball player for doing exactly the same thing. - Author: Al Spalding

#4. The finished product is a result of a series of organic, creative mistakes
perception itself becoming the editor of the final report. - Author: Spalding Gray

#5. When I read, you know, a rough neighborhood of Portland, I'm like - what? - they didn't have kombucha bars there? - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#6. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#7. I started home school around sixth grade, but I'd only done a couple of national commercials. I remember I had this Spalding commercial with Paul Pierce from the Celtics, and I used to go to school, and people made fun of it. It wasn't even cool to be an actor; you got made fun of. - Author: Tequan Richmond

#8. It's weird sometimes to have people not see me or see what I do. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#9. It's not a real relationship if you're not spending at least half of it pretending to get along fine for the benefit of other people.' Adam - Author: Nick Spalding

#10. My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#11. The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#12. I may look like an American WASPy doctor or lawyer, but I feel just like Woody Allen. Don't cast me for my looks - I have a very ironic, existential, crazy Jew in me. - Author: Spalding Gray

#13. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#14. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#15. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#16. I always say that the problem with jazz accessibility is not the content of the music, it's people's ability to access it. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#17. Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#18. Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#19. You think you know how you'll react to anything and then a boy shows up and kisses you, and some of that just vanishes. - Author: Amy Spalding

#20. There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#21. And in this role (the Stage Manager) I could speak from my heart, you know! ... provided I can memorize the lines. - Author: Spalding Gray

#22. Jack had an actor's control." Chuck Spalding - Author: David Pietrusza

#23. Professional baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way. - Author: Albert Goodwill Spalding

#24. 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. - Author: 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#26. All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities. - Author: Spalding Gray

#27. My name means 'hope' in Spanish and it's a name I want to live up to. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#28. Don't ever live vicariously. This is your life. Live. - Author: Lavinia Spalding

#29. I was raised as an upper-class WASP in New England, and there was this old tradition there that everyone would simply be guided into the right way after Ivy League college and onward and upward. And it rejected me, I rejected it, and I ended up as a kind of refugee, really. - Author: Spalding Gray

#30. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#31. To receive more, we must give out what we receive ... For it is by giving that we set in operation the unfailing law of measure for measure. With no thought of receiving, it is impossible to avoid receiving, for the abundance you have given is returned to you in fulfillment of the law. - Author: Baird T. Spalding

#32. I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#33. The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#34. I understood once I held a baby in my arms, why some people have the need to keep having them. - Author: Spalding Gray

#35. The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#36. Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#37. What I'm identifying with is the vision or the idea - whatever was the little nugget that started it. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#38. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#39. The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#40. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#41. Radio allowed me to be a creator, and TV stole that creation from me by literalizing - and to some extent limiting - my vision. - Author: Spalding Gray

#42. How theraputic it is to surrond yourself with people stranger than yourself. - Author: Spalding Gray

#43. I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#44. There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#45. I'm not gonna sit around and waste my precious divine energy trying to explain and be ashamed of things you think are wrong with me. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#46. If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#47. Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#48. If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#49. Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#50. often come to our cabin in the evening to get additional help with their lessons. - Author: Eliza Spalding Warren

#51. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#52. No human mind may measure the blessings conferred by the game of base ball on the soldiers of the Civil War. It had its earliest evolution when soldiers, North and South, were striving to forget their foes by cultivating, through this grand game, fraternal friendships with comrades in arms. - Author: Albert Goodwill Spalding

#53. Base thy life on principle, not on rules. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#54. A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#55. I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#56. I see [my pen] as an extension of my musculature. It's like being a painter. It's the closest I can get to my breath. - Author: Spalding Gray

#57. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#58. It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#59. Do definite good; first of all to yourself, then to definite persons. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#60. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#61. Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#62. Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#63. Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility. - Author: Albert Goodwill Spalding

#64. Real life has always let me down. That's why I do the monologues. I have always said I would rather tell a life than live a life. But I have to live a life in order to tell one. - Author: Spalding Gray

#65. Our prejudices are like physical infirmities - we cannot do what they prevent us from doing. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#66. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#67. To learn the worth of a man's religion, do business with him. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#68. The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#69. Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#70. I like to read, and I like dance. I don't dance, but I like to see other people dance. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#71. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#72. Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#73. The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#74. I did grow up in a rough neighborhood in Portland, which is an abstract concept for anybody who's rolled through Portland because now it looks like a TV set, literally. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#75. If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own? - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#76. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#77. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#78. A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#79. When Mom had her first nervous breakdown, she said she had a vision of Christ coming to her in the living room. - Author: Spalding Gray

#80. If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#81. If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#82. Skiing is better than sex actually, because for me a good round of sex might be seven minutes. Skiing you can do for seven hours. - Author: Spalding Gray

#83. The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#84. I don't watch TV, I don't spend time on the Internet, and I don't party much. I don't text very much, either. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#85. I consulted a therapist at Mass. General. After about 20 minutes, he stopped me and said, 'You're just a big existential garbage pail. Go home and relax.' - Author: Spalding Gray

#86. Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#87. He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation. - Author: Spalding Gray

#88. The Czech ease has become my saving grace for traveling! Plus,with its light weight and small size, I save thousands of dollars every year in airline fees. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#89. You don't have to be fearless to do anything, you can be scared out of your mind. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#90. The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#91. In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#92. Everything is possible to him that dares. - Author: Albert Goodwill Spalding

#93. I was consumed by some kind of unholy, indignant rage that propelled me through the confrontation to its successful conclusion - and out the other side into the cool, calm lagoon of reflective dread known as the 'what the fuck have I just done?' feeling. - Author: Nick Spalding

#94. Learn to thrill yourself ... Make everything bright and beautiful about you. Cultivate a spirit of humor. Enjoy the sunshine. - Author: Baird T. Spalding

#95. The person seeing perfection is the Master. - Author: Baird T. Spalding

#96. 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. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#97. Jazz music just resonates with the frequency of me. - Author: Esperanza Spalding

#98. They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#99. What we love to do we find time to do. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding

#100. Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world. - Author: John Lancaster Spalding