John Lancaster Spalding: Trending quotes (page 7)

“Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 263

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 176

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 31

Teachers

“Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 131

Men , Business

“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

Love , Hate , Thinking , Personality

“We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 129-130

Peace , Disappointment , Soul , Understanding

“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.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Love , Science

“As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right without thinking whether or not it shall be known.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 139

Thinking

“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

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

Men

“When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 115

Pleasure , Business

“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.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 164

Life , World , Sense

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 265

Men , Money , Freedom , Help

“Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Truth

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 58-59

Men , Truth , Youth , World

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 233

People , Age , Thinking , Country

“We neglect the opportunities which are always present, and imagine that if those that are rare were offered, we should put them to good use. Thus we waste life waiting for what if it came we should be unprepared for.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 75

Life , Imagination , Waiting

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 233

Thinking

“The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)