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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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John Lancaster Spalding
Age: 76 †
Born: 1840
Born: June 2
Died: 1916
Died: August 25
Author
Biographer
Catholic Priest
Lebanon
Kentucky
States
Law
Effect
Made
Moral
Pass
Would
State
Laws
Forbidding
Time
Social
Sacrifice
Dissipation
Money
Citizens
Compel
Political
Effects
Commercial
Become
Holy
Systems
Power
Wise
Mental

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Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.
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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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Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.
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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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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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The lover of education labors first of all to educate himself.
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Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
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Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption
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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 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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Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
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What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
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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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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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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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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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They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.
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Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.
John Lancaster Spalding