John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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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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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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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.
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The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
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Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident.
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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.
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The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.
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In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
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If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
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Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.
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There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.
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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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If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?
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In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied.
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What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
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We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
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The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.
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To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.
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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.
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The best book is but the record of the best life.
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Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.
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Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.
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As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them.