John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

202 Sourced Quotes

To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. We are too much afraid, said Cato, of death, exile and poverty.

John Lancaster Spalding
What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.

John Lancaster Spalding
To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us.

John Lancaster Spalding
The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

John Lancaster Spalding
They who admire and reverence noble and heroic men are akin to them.

John Lancaster Spalding
When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.

John Lancaster Spalding
Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.

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
Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.

John Lancaster Spalding
The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.

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
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
As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.

John Lancaster Spalding
Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.

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
If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.

John Lancaster Spalding
Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.

John Lancaster Spalding
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.

John Lancaster Spalding
Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.

John Lancaster Spalding
A principal aim of education is to give students a taste for literature, for the books of life and power, and to accomplish this, it is necessary that their minds be held aloof from the babblement and discussions of the hour, that they may accustom themselves to take interest in the words and deeds of the greatest men, and so make themselves able and worthy to shape a larger and nobler future; but if their hours of leisure are spent over journals and reviews, they will, in later years, become the helpless victims of the newspaper habit.

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
It is the tendency of the study of science to make us patient, humble and attentive to the smallest things. Is not this part of religion?

John Lancaster Spalding
They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.

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
To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.

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
Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory.

John Lancaster Spalding
What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others.

John Lancaster Spalding
They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.

John Lancaster Spalding
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.

John Lancaster Spalding