1.
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is
John Lancaster Spalding
2.
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.
John Lancaster Spalding
3.
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
John Lancaster Spalding
4.
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
John Lancaster Spalding
5.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
John Lancaster Spalding
6.
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
7.
Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
John Lancaster Spalding
8.
What we love to do we find time to do.
John Lancaster Spalding
9.
Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
John Lancaster Spalding
10.
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
11.
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
12.
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.
John Lancaster Spalding
13.
It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
John Lancaster Spalding
14.
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
15.
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
16.
Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.
John Lancaster Spalding
17.
If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.
John Lancaster Spalding
18.
Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
John Lancaster Spalding
19.
The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.
John Lancaster Spalding
20.
The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.
John Lancaster Spalding
21.
The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
John Lancaster Spalding
22.
In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
John Lancaster Spalding
23.
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
24.
If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.
John Lancaster Spalding
25.
Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.
John Lancaster Spalding
26.
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
27.
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
28.
The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.
John Lancaster Spalding
29.
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
30.
It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.
John Lancaster Spalding
31.
What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
John Lancaster Spalding
32.
They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.
John Lancaster Spalding
33.
If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
John Lancaster Spalding
34.
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
John Lancaster Spalding
35.
Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
John Lancaster Spalding
36.
He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.
John Lancaster Spalding
37.
The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.
John Lancaster Spalding
38.
Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.
John Lancaster Spalding
39.
Base thy life on principle, not on rules.
John Lancaster Spalding
40.
If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.
John Lancaster Spalding
41.
The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.
John Lancaster Spalding
42.
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
43.
One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
John Lancaster Spalding
44.
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
45.
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
John Lancaster Spalding
46.
It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.
John Lancaster Spalding
47.
The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
John Lancaster Spalding
48.
If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
John Lancaster Spalding
49.
If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
John Lancaster Spalding
50.
The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.
John Lancaster Spalding
