John Lancaster Spalding
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.Collection: Faith
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.
The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one isCollection: Inspirational
Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.Collection: Motivational
Dislike of another's opinions and beliefs neither justifies our own nor makes us more certain of them: and to transfer the repugnance to the person himself is a mark of a vulgar mind.Collection: Mind
What we love to do we find time to do.Collection: Time
Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Believe
Be suspicious of your sincerity when you are the advocate of that upon which your livelihood depends.Collection: Sincerity
The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.Collection: Self
If thou wouldst help others deal with them as though they were what they should beCollection: Helping Others
Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.Collection: Thinking
As a brave man goes into fire or flood or pestilence to save a human life, so a generous mind follows after truth and love, and is not frightened from the pursuit by danger or toil or obloquy.Collection: Men
Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.Collection: Believe
The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.Collection: Desire
If there were nothing else to trouble us, the fate of the flowers would make us sad.Collection: Flower
Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.Collection: Prejudice
If our opinions rest upon solid ground, those who attack them do not make us angry, but themselves ridiculous.Collection: Ridiculous
Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.Collection: Family
When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.Collection: Bears
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.Collection: Remember
Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.Collection: Solitude
The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.Collection: Thinking
What we enjoy, not what we possess, is ours, and in labouring for the possession of many things, we lose the power to enjoy the best.Collection: Enjoy
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.Collection: Mean
Insight makes argument ridiculous.Collection: Ridiculous
Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.Collection: Worry
We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.Collection: Children
Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.Collection: Prejudice
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.Collection: Beautiful
The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.Collection: Mind
There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.Collection: Heart
They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Brave
Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.Collection: Soul
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.Collection: Teaching
Break not the will of the young, but guide it to right ends.Collection: Break
The noblest are they who turning from the things the vulgar crave, seek the source of a blessed life in worlds to which the senses do not lead.Collection: Blessed
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.Collection: Mind
Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.Collection: Love Is
Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.Collection: Dwelling Place
There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.Collection: Mistake
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.Collection: Gentleman
As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.Collection: Thinking
Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.Collection: Hero
When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.Collection: Approval
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.Collection: Color
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.Collection: Errors
The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.Collection: Law