John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
-
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.
-
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.
-
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
-
They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others, the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated.
-
Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
-
If thou hast sought happiness and missed it, but hast found wisdom instead, thou art fortunate.
-
Let not what thou canst not prevent, though it be the ruin of thy home or country, draw thee from thy proper work.
-
Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns.
-
If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
-
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.
-
There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
-
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.
-
God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?
-
The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.
-
If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.
-
Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.
-
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
-
True readers … are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life.
-
No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.
-
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
-
We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?
-
Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.
-
Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.
-
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|