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The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise.
John Lancaster Spalding -
The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell-'Abandon hope, ye who enter here.'
John Lancaster Spalding
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As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right without thinking whether or not it shall be known.
John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.
John Lancaster Spalding -
The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.
John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.
John Lancaster Spalding -
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
John Lancaster Spalding -
If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?
John Lancaster Spalding
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Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.
John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
John Lancaster Spalding -
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
John Lancaster Spalding -
In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
John Lancaster Spalding
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We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident.
John Lancaster Spalding -
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.
John Lancaster Spalding -
If thou need money, get it in an honest way-by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
John Lancaster Spalding