John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

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.

Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain.

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

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

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.

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.

As the visit of one we love makes the whole day pleasant, so is it illumined and made fair by a brave and beautiful thought.

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

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.

When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring.

Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

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

Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns.

If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.