Top 120 John Lancaster Spalding Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If all were gentle and contented as sheep, all would be as feeble and helpless.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

52. “The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

53. “If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should be.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

54. “A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

55. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

56. “The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

57. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

60. “Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

61. “A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

62. “To learn the worth of a man’s religion, do business with him.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

63. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

64. “Base thy life on principle, not on rules.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

65. “Faith, like love, unites; opinion, like hate, separates.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

67. “Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

69. “The first requisite of a gentleman is to be true, brave and noble, and to be therefore a rebuke and scandal to venal and vulgar souls.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

71. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

73. “Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

74. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

75. “We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

76. “If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

78. “One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

80. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

81. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

82. “They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

83. “Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

84. “The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

85. “Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?”

— John Lancaster Spalding

86. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

87. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

88. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

89. “We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

90. “If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

91. “When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

92. “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.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

93. “Insight makes argument ridiculous.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

95. “If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

96. “If thou wouldst be implacable, be so with thyself.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

97. “If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

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

— John Lancaster Spalding

99. “There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.”

— John Lancaster Spalding

100. “Make thyself perfect; others, happy.”

— John Lancaster Spalding