John Lancaster Spalding: Mind

“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"

World

“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

Life , Men , Books , Education

“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

Spring , Flowers

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

John Lancaster Spalding

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Age

“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

Personality

“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

Learning

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Education

“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

Education , Exercises

“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

Education , Learning

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

“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

Learning

“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

Love , Life , Truth , Literature

“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

“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

“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

Thinking

“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

“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

Love , Life , Truth

“The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 268

God , Nature