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Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.

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
Unbearable
Solitude
Bear
Bears

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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.
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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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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.
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We may avoid much disappointment and bitterness of soul by learning to understand how little necessary to our joy and peace are the things the multitude most desire and seek.
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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
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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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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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If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
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In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
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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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There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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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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
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We shrink from the contemplation of our dead bodies, forgetting that when dead they are no longer ours, and concern us as little as the hairs that have fallen from our heads.
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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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Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
John Lancaster Spalding