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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Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.
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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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If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be
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Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.
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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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Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.
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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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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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When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.
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Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.
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The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.
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If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
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There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
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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.
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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.