John Lancaster Spalding: Quotes about love

“The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 212

Love , Truth

“When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Love

“Moral education is the development of individuality, and individuality can not be developed by formulas and mechanical processes: it is the work of the master who brings to his task a genuine and loving interest in the individual.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 116

Love , Education

“Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 170

Love

“There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 80

Love , Heart

“Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Love , World , Spring , Joy

“Houses and fields in which we lived and played in childhood and youth with those we loved, grow to be part of our being. The sight of them in later years touches us with mystic charm. It is like a vision from beyond the tomb or a memory of a lost Paradise. But little by little their power over us grows less and the light that falls on them becomes more like the common day. Their sacredness diminishes, their beauty fades. The young birds have flown, the old are dead, the leaves and blossoms have fallen and but the empty nest is left among the naked boughs; and looking on the desolation we feel that we have no abiding place on earth, since the home itself loses its consecration.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 137

Love , Youth , Beauty , Feeling

“The weak, when they have authority, surround themselves with the weak. It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them, since they whose greatness is due to their position find it difficult to love those whom inner power makes great.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

Love , Men

“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

Love , Men

“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

Love , Education , Thinking , Help

“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 , Truth , Error , Learning

“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

Love , Age , Heart

“To love the perfection with which we do our work, or the company of those with whom we work, is the secret of learning to love the work itself.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 117

Love , Secret , Learning , Perfection

“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

Love , Time

“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

Love , Truth , Justice , Thinking

“If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers … must so deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this, nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that we live with God and that righteousness is life.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 257-258

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 64

Love , Hate , Faith

“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

Love , Truth , World

“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

Love , World , Fashion , Strong

“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

Love , Confidence , Understanding , Memory