John Lancaster Spalding

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"They who think they know all, learn nothing."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good."

"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 multitude are matter-of-fact. They live in commonplace concerns and interests. Their problems are, how to get more plentiful and better food and drink, more comfortable and beautiful clothing, more commodious dwellings, for themselves and their children. When they seek relaxation from their labors for material things, they gossip of the daily happenings, or they play games or dance or go to the theatre or club, or they travel or they read story books, or accounts in the newspapers of elections, murders, peculations, marriages, divorces, failures and successes in business; or they simply sit in a kind of lethargy. They fall asleep and awake to tread again the beaten path. While such is their life, it is not possible that they should take interest or find pleasure in religion, poetry, philosophy, or art. To ask them to read books whose life-breath is pure thought and beauty is as though one asked them to read things written in a language they do not understand and have no desire to learn. A taste for the best books, as a taste for whatever is best, is acquired; and it can be acquired only by long study and practice. It is a result of free and disinterested self-activity, of efforts to attain what rarely brings other reward than the consciousness of having loved and striven for the best. But the many have little appreciation of what does not flatter or soothe the senses. Their world, like the world of children and animals, is good enough for them; meat and drink, dance and song, are worth more, in their eyes, than all the thoughts of all the literatures. A love tale is better than a great poem, and the story of a bandit makes Plutarch seem tiresome. This is what they think and feel, and what, so long as they remain what they are, they will continue to think and feel. We do not urge a child to read Plato—why should we find fault with the many for not loving the best books?"

"The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world."

"To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds."

"In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied."

"The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects."

"If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books."

"Drunkards and sensualists have become heroes and saints; but sluggards have never risen to the significance and worth of human beings. Sloth enfeebles the root of life, and degrades more surely, if less swiftly, than the sins of passion."

"The genius is childlike. Like children he looks into the world as into a new creation and finds there a perennial source of wonder and delight."

"We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man."

"The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image."

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

"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."

"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.|"

"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."

"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."

"True readers … are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life."

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

"The best book is but the record of the best life."

"They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others, the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated."

"If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched."

"O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood."

"If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation."

"Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates."

"It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age."

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

"When we have not the strength or the courage to grasp a new truth, we persuade ourselves that it is not a truth at all."

"We neglect the opportunities which are always present, and imagine that if those that are rare were offered, we should put them to good use. Thus we waste life waiting for what if it came we should be unprepared for."

"If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself."

"Love finds us young and keeps us so: immortal himself, he permits not age to enter the hearts where he reigns."