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We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
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
Defects
Qualities
Ridiculous
Quality
Less
Made
Affectation
More quotes by John Lancaster Spalding
Whoever has freed himself from envy and bitterness may begin to try to see things as they are.
John Lancaster Spalding
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.
John Lancaster Spalding
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
John Lancaster Spalding
Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
John Lancaster Spalding
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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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
There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
John Lancaster Spalding
They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
John Lancaster Spalding
Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
John Lancaster Spalding
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
A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection.
John Lancaster Spalding
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.
John Lancaster Spalding
Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
John Lancaster Spalding
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
The common man is impelled and controlled by interests the superior, by ideas.
John Lancaster Spalding
We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
John Lancaster Spalding
As our power over others increases, we become less free for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.
John Lancaster Spalding
The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
John Lancaster Spalding
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
The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
John Lancaster Spalding
