John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age.
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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.
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Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.
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It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.
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The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good.
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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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A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.
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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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What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others.
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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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To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. 'We are too much afraid,' said Cato, 'of death, exile and poverty.'
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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.
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Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of conduct can not make us good.
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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.
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If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be
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When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.
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They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.
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More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live.
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When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself.
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Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.
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It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.
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No occupation is more tiresome or depressing than that of killing time. It is the cause of lifeweariness, the punishment the soul inflicts upon itself when reduced to passiveness and servitude.
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If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.
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The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.