John Lancaster Spalding - True Quotes

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The best money can procure for thee is freedom to live in thy true self. It is more apt however to enslave than to liberate. It is good also when thou makest it a means to help thy fellow men; but here too it is easier to harm than to benefit: for the money thou givest another is useful to him only when it stimulates him to self-activity.

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
The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to venal and vulgar souls.

John Lancaster Spalding
The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.

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 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
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