John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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Base thy life on principle, not on rules.
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In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
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We neglect the opportunities which are always present, and imagine that if those that are rare were offered, we should put them to good use. Thus we waste life waiting for what if it came we should be unprepared for.
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If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from many of the highest and profoundest minds.
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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.
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We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
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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.
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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.
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When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.
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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.
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Philosophers and theologians, like the vulgar, prefer contradiction to enlightenment. They refute one another more gladly than they learn from one another, as though man lived by shunning error and not by loving truth. Accept their formulas and they sink back into their easy chairs and comfortably doze.
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Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.
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If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.
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One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
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Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.
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Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than the sins of passion.
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As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind.
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When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.
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The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.
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When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? … If this be thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for.
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However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once.
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The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to venal and vulgar souls.
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They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.
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The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.