John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise.
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What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.
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When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
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We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.
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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.
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Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
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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.
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If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
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The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell-'Abandon hope, ye who enter here.'
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Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
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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.
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It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.
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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.
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We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
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The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.
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It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
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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.
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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.
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If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.
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If thou need money, get it in an honest way-by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
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The best money can procure for thee is freedom to live in thy true self. It is more apt however to enslave than to liberate. It is good also when thou makest it a means to help thy fellow men; but here too it is easier to harm than to benefit: for the money thou givest another is useful to him only when it stimulates him to self-activity.
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The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.
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Perfection is beyond our reach, but they who earnestly strive to become perfect, acquire excellences and virtues of which the multitude have no conception.
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The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.