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John Lancaster Spalding Quotes
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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

John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

“To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 23

“We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 30-31

“The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 96

“Obedience is not servility. On the contrary the servile are never rightly obedient.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a perennial source of wonder and delight.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 27

“The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 113

“Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 239

“A great man, who lives intimately with his admirers, with difficulty escapes being made ridiculous.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“We truly know only what we have taught ourselves.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 201

“No occupation is more tiresome or depressing than that of killing time. It is the cause of lifeweariness, the punishment the soul inflicts upon itself when reduced to passiveness and servitude.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 156

“If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 156

“The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 171-172

“Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 39

“It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 19

“Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 114

“Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

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

“The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 246

“If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 52

“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

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

“The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 62

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 239-240

“The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 146

“No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 261

“When the crowd acclaims its favorites it applauds itself.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 72

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 244

“Folly will run its course and it is the part of wisdom not to take it too seriously.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 216

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 183-184

“What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth he enters my world and is my friend.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 89

“Each one fashions and bears his world with him, and that unless he himself become wise, strong and loving, no change in his circumstances can make him rich or free or happy.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 5

“What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 240

“If thy words are wise, they will not seem so to the foolish: if they are deep the shallow will not appreciate them. Think not highly of thyself, then, when thou art praised by many.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 19

“Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 20

“The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 207

“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

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

“The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 136

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 221

“The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one’s self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Let not what thou canst not prevent, though it be the ruin of thy home or country, draw thee from thy proper work.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 98

“When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 207

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 238