John Lancaster Spalding: Trending quotes (page 10)

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 229

Intelligence , Business

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 196

Death , Men

“If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 178

“Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than the sins of passion.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 26

Life , Passion

“In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

God , Animals

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Appearance

“Base thy life on principle, not on rules.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 199

Life

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 168

Love , Beauty , Home , Sleep

“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.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 106

People , Literature , Study , Light

“Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 108

Solitude

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 274

Error , Imagination

“As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Love , Beauty

“Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 84

Education

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 269

Pleasure , World , Problem , Learning

“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

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

Learning , Parting

“Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 243

Life , Spring , Knowledge

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 270

Exercises

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Truth , Appearance

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 203

Love , Soul

“The smaller the company, the larger the conversation.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 182