John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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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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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.
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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.
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The mind perceives … that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.
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The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others.
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Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint. Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.
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The will-the one thing it is most important to educate-we neglect.
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To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.
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Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.
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We truly know only what we have taught ourselves.
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The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.
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If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
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Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.
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If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
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Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory.
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In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
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Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.
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Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
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The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casualitysic, color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.
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The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
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Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man.
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Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.
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They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.