John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
-
It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day,-this is the work of genius.
-
As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.
-
As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought.
-
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
-
The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell-'Abandon hope, ye who enter here.'
-
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
-
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
-
As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.
-
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
-
When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.
-
It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful-it is enough that it is a truth.
-
The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.
-
The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.
-
The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one’s self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.
-
If thou need money, get it in an honest way-by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
-
He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.
-
Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.
-
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
-
To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.
-
It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.
-
The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
-
Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.
-
The noblest are they who turning from the things the vulgar crave, seek the source of a blessed life in worlds to which the senses do not lead.
-
The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.