Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

John Lancaster Spalding

202 quotes

“As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each individual bears within himself an ideal man, and to bring him forth in perfect form is his divinely imposed life-work.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“More inspiring and interesting teaching alone can make progress in education possible: for such teaching alone has power to produce greater self-activity, greater concentration of mind, greater desire to learn not only how to get a living, but how to live.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They who think they know all, learn nothing.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being, leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood.”
John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source