John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form.

What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.

A great man, who lives intimately with his admirers, with difficulty escapes being made ridiculous.

Insight makes argument ridiculous.

We truly know only what we have taught ourselves.

The happiness of the ignorant is but an animal’s paradise.

Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.

Base thy life on principle, not on rules.

Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.

To secure approval one must remain within the bounds of conventional mediocrity. Whatever lies beyond, whether it be greater insight and virtue, or greater stolidity and vice, is condemned. The noblest men, like the worst criminals, have been done to death.

Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.

Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture.

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 we have attained success, we see how inferior it is to the hope, yearning and enthusiasm with which we started forth in life’s morning.

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.