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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

“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

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others, the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 46

“If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 254

“Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 255

“In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 193

“What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 180-181

“It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day,—this is the work of genius.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 33

“To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. “We are too much afraid,” said Cato, “of death, exile and poverty.””

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 227

“The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 34

“Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 197

“The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to venal and vulgar souls.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 120

“If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 215

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 234-235

“Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Beauty least adorned is most adorned”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 35

“The will—the one thing it is most important to educate—we neglect.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

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

“They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“When we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life’s morning.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 185

“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

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

“If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Insight makes argument ridiculous.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of conduct can not make us good.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 103

“It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 166

“God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 227