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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
Bear
Bears
Unbearable
Solitude

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Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
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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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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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The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.
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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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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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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.
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Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
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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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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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Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.
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Our prejudices are like physical infirmities — we cannot do what they prevent us from doing.
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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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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 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 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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If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.
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.
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We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
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The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
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