John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

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.

However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once.

Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.

Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.

What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.

If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be

We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see.

Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.

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.

The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a perennial source of wonder and delight.

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

The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.

Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous.

The pessimist writes over the gates of life what the poet has inscribed on the portals of hell—”Abandon hope, ye who enter here.”

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