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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.

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
Law
Driven
Insincere
Rather
Valuable
Pleading
Truth
Discipline
Blur
Look
View
Equity
Looks
Views
Petty
Make
Study
Tends
Justice
Formal
Blurs
Practice
Mental
Legality

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Be watchful lest thou lose the power of desiring and loving what appeals to the soul this is the miser's curse this the chain and ball the sensualist drags.
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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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It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
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Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.
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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.
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In the world of thought a man's rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.
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The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.
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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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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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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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There are few things it is more important to learn than how to live on little and be therewith content: for the less we need what is without, the more leisure have we to live within.
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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.
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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
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To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden for simply to know by rote is not to know at all.
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We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
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In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
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Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of the Soul.
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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 been done to death.
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Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding