Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by John Lancaster Spalding

The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.

As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.

We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.

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.

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

Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.

The noblest are they who turning from the things the vulgar crave, seek the source of a blessed life in worlds to which the senses do not lead.

If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.

Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.

They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.

If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.

The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.

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.

If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from many of the highest and profoundest minds.

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

To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.

If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.

The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.

The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.

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

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

In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.

If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.

There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.

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.

We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.

Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.

Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.

Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.

Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.

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

Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.

What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.

A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.

Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.

If thy words are wise, they will not seem so to the foolish: if they are deep the shallow will not appreciate them. Think not highly of thyself, then, when thou art praised by many.

If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?

To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.

Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.

We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.

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

The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.

No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.

If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be

Dislike of another's opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.

What we love to do we find time to do.

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

There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.

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.

The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is

Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.

Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.

Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.

Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.