John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.

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.

No sooner does a divine gift reveal itself in youth or maid than its market value becomes the decisive consideration, and the poor young creatures are offered for sale, as we might sell angels who had strayed among us.

We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.

God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?

Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.

Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.

It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.

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

Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.

Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.

The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|

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.

It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being, leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business.

In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.