John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

202 Sourced Quotes

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
Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?

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
As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.

John Lancaster Spalding
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.

John Lancaster Spalding
The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.

John Lancaster Spalding
The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.

John Lancaster Spalding
Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.

John Lancaster Spalding
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.

John Lancaster Spalding
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.

John Lancaster Spalding
The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.

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
Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.

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
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

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
It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age.

John Lancaster Spalding
Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.

John Lancaster Spalding
The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.

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
It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.

John Lancaster Spalding
The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.

John Lancaster Spalding
We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?

John Lancaster Spalding
As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind.

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 today,—this is the work of genius.

John Lancaster Spalding
Perfection is beyond our reach, but they who earnestly strive to become perfect, acquire excellences and virtues of which the multitude have no conception.

John Lancaster Spalding
Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.

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
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
What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth he enters my world and is my friend.

John Lancaster Spalding