John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.

If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.

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

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.

Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.

The strong man is he who knows how and is able to become and be himself; the magnanimous man is he who, being strong, knows how and is able to issue forth from himself, as from a fortress, to guide, protect, encourage, and save others.

In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied.

If thou hast sought happiness and missed it, but hast found wisdom instead, thou art fortunate.

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.

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.

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.

We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.

They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.

Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.