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John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

John Lancaster Spalding was an American author, poet, advocate for higher education, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria from 1877 to 1908 and a co-founder of The Catholic University of America.

The diocesan offices of the Diocese of Peoria are located in the Spalding Center, named for him. Peoria's Catholic high school for boys, Spalding Institute, was named for him. The school closed in the 1988-1989 school year when it merged with Bergan High School to form Peoria Notre Dame High School. Spalding Hall at The Catholic University of America was also named for him. Wikipedia  

✵ 2. June 1840 – 25. August 1916
John Lancaster Spalding photo
John Lancaster Spalding: 202 quotes2 likes

Famous John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

“Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 158

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 204

“Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 165

“Make thyself perfect; others, happy.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 76

“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.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 148

“They who think they know all, learn nothing.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 257

John Lancaster Spalding Quotes about love

“We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 21

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 220

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 64

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 241

“To love the perfection with which we do our work, or the company of those with whom we work, is the secret of learning to love the work itself.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 117

“If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers … must so deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this, nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that we live with God and that righteousness is life.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 257-258

John Lancaster Spalding Quotes about life

“The best book is but the record of the best life.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 44

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 14

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 7

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 241

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 226

“The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 71

John Lancaster Spalding: Trending quotes

“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.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 11-12
Context: 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?

“The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Means and Ends of Education (1895), Chapter 1 "Truth and Love"

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 180

John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

“The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Means and Ends of Education (1895), Chapter 1 "Truth and Love"

“The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 22

“Liberty is more precious than money or office; and we should be vigilant lest we purchase wealth or place at the price of inner freedom.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 77

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 78

“If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 127

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 226

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 149

“When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 17

“Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 232

“They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Variant: They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 90

“They who admire and reverence noble and heroic men are akin to them.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 145

“Perfection is beyond our reach, but they who earnestly strive to become perfect, acquire excellences and virtues of which the multitude have no conception.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 161

“The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Means and Ends of Education (1895), Chapter 1 "Truth and Love"

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 189

“It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 167

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 212

“Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 192

“It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

“When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 171

“Moral education is the development of individuality, and individuality can not be developed by formulas and mechanical processes: it is the work of the master who brings to his task a genuine and loving interest in the individual.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116

“Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 169

“Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 170

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 241

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 80

“It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 242

“Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 172

“If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 25

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 15

“Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 16

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 127

“Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 130

“Houses and fields in which we lived and played in childhood and youth with those we loved, grow to be part of our being. The sight of them in later years touches us with mystic charm. It is like a vision from beyond the tomb or a memory of a lost Paradise. But little by little their power over us grows less and the light that falls on them becomes more like the common day. Their sacredness diminishes, their beauty fades. The young birds have flown, the old are dead, the leaves and blossoms have fallen and but the empty nest is left among the naked boughs; and looking on the desolation we feel that we have no abiding place on earth, since the home itself loses its consecration.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 137

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 208

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 13

“The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

“The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 24

“As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 163

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 170

“One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 234

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 81

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 223

“There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 160

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 230

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 230

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 245

“What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 202

“If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 181

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 119

“The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 32

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