John Lancaster Spalding - Thought Quotes

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Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain.

John Lancaster Spalding
Not to be able to utter one's thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.

John Lancaster Spalding
A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.

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
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
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
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
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
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 mind perceives … that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.

John Lancaster Spalding
What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.

John Lancaster Spalding
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|

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
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