John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.

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.

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.

No occupation is more tiresome or depressing than that of killing time. It is the cause of lifeweariness, the punishment the soul inflicts upon itself when reduced to passiveness and servitude.

What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others.

A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.

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.

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

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.

The test of the worth of a school is not the amount of knowledge it imparts, but the self-activity it calls forth.

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.

Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.

It is the business of culture to make us able to consider with intelligent interest all real opinions, even those we do not and can not accept.

They who think they know all, learn nothing.

They who truly know have had to unlearn hardly less than they have had to learn.