John Lancaster Spalding famous quotes
03-28-2025
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The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
What we love to do we find time to do.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Base thy life on principle, not on rules.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Insight makes argument ridiculous.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
-- 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 -
Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Leave each one his touch of folly; it helps to lighten life's burden which, if he could see himself as he is, might be too heavy to carry.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Do definite good; first of all to yourself, then to definite persons.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life's morning.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
-- 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 -
As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Make thyself perfect; others, happy.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
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 -
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.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
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.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.
-- John Lancaster Spalding -
Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
-- John Lancaster Spalding
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