John Lancaster Spalding Quotes - Page 5

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

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.

If we learn from those only, of whose lives and opinions we altogether approve, we shall have to turn from many of the highest and profoundest minds.

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

It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day, this is the work of genius.

The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.

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.

There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.

Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.

To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.

He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.

Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption

The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.

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.

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

If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.

They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.

If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.

In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

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

Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.

If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.