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

John Lancaster Spalding

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John Lancaster Spalding
Age: 76 †
Born: 1840
Born: June 2
Died: 1916
Died: August 25
Author
Biographer
Catholic Priest
Lebanon
Kentucky
Quenched
Sink
Attempt
Light
Soul
Matter

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As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.
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In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
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If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
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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.
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If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
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The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
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Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
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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.
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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.
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The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
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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.
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Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
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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.
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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.
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If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
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