John Lancaster Spalding - Truth Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

View all John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.

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
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
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
We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.

John Lancaster Spalding
To think profoundly, to seek and speak truth, to love justice and denounce wrong is to draw upon one's self the ill will of many.

John Lancaster Spalding
The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.

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

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
The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.

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

John Lancaster Spalding
It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.

John Lancaster Spalding
However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once.

John Lancaster Spalding
The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.

John Lancaster Spalding
The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.

John Lancaster Spalding