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John Lancaster Spalding
202 quotes
“Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint. Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The smaller the company, the larger the conversation.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How is it possible not to strive to know what the awakening minds of the young are eager to learn from us? It is little less than criminal that we should put them off with foolish speech or lies.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life’s morning.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell—”Abandon hope, ye who enter here.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Base thy life on principle, not on rules.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We truly know only what we have taught ourselves.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Insight makes argument ridiculous.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A great man, who lives intimately with his admirers, with difficulty escapes being made ridiculous.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul—this is the miser’s curse—this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source