Top 15 John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? … If this be thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for.

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.

What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.

We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.

A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.

It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves.

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.

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.

Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man.

Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.

If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers … must so deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this, nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that we live with God and that righteousness is life.

They who think they know all, learn nothing.

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

If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.

If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?