John Lancaster Spalding: Use

“It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.”

John Lancaster Spalding

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 167

Truth

“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

“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

“It is the tendency of the study of science to make us patient, humble and attentive to the smallest things. Is not this part of religion?”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Religion , Study , Science , Parting

“We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.”

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Dead , Forgetting

“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

“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

Beauty , Star , Flowers , Happiness

“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

“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

“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

Truth , Imagination , Thinking

“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

Youth , Angels , Decision

“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

“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

“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

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

John Lancaster Spalding

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

Truth

“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

“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

Death , Fear , Lying , Evil

“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

“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