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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
Become
Holy
Systems
Power
Wise
Mental
States
Law
Effect
Made
Moral
Pass
Would
State
Laws
Forbidding
Time
Social
Sacrifice
Dissipation
Money
Citizens
Compel
Political
Effects
Commercial

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Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.
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As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best.
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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 important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
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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.
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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.
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Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
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They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
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Solitude is unbearable for those who can not bear themselves.
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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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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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Language should be pure, noble and graceful, as the body should be so: for both are vestures of 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 teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.
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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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Faith, like love, unites opinion, like hate, separates.
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We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.
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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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If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.
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