John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

202 Sourced Quotes

If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?

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
The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

John Lancaster Spalding
No pure delight cheers the farmer whose mind is intent on the price he shall get for his crops rather than on the joy there is in tilling them and seeing them grow and ripen: for such an one does not love the land nor his home nor any of the most beautiful and sacred things, but tends to become like the brute that eats and sleeps and dies. His thoughts are with what feeds the animal, and that which nourishes the human is hidden from him.

John Lancaster Spalding
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.

John Lancaster Spalding
More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live.

John Lancaster Spalding
The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others.

John Lancaster Spalding
Philosophers and theologians, like the vulgar, prefer contradiction to enlightenment. They refute one another more gladly than they learn from one another, as though man lived by shunning error and not by loving truth. Accept their formulas and they sink back into their easy chairs and comfortably doze.

John Lancaster Spalding
God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?

John Lancaster Spalding
True readers … are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life.

John Lancaster Spalding
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.

John Lancaster Spalding
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.

John Lancaster Spalding
When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? … If this be thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for.

John Lancaster Spalding
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
Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.

John Lancaster Spalding
If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.

John Lancaster Spalding
If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?

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
The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.

John Lancaster Spalding
To learn the worth of a man's religion, do business with him.

John Lancaster Spalding
Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.

John Lancaster Spalding
Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.

John Lancaster Spalding
Conversation injures more than it benefits. Men talk to escape from themselves, from sheer dread of silence. Reflection makes them uncomfortable, and they find distraction in a noise of words. They seek not the company of those who might enlighten and improve them, but that of whoever can divert and amuse them. Thus the intercourse which ought to be a chief means of education, is for the most part, the occasion of mental and moral enfeeblement.

John Lancaster Spalding
Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns.

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