John Lancaster Spalding

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 …

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.

The smaller the company, the larger the conversation.

The seeking for truth is better than its loveless possession.

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

What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.

The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

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.

If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.

The mind perceives … that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.

States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.

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

Philosophers and theologians, like the vulgar, prefer contradiction to enlightenment. They refute one another more gladly than they learn from one another, as though man lived by shunning error and not by loving truth. Accept their …

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

To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. “We are too much afraid,” said Cato, …

Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.

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.

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