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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.

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
True
Requisite
Soul
Scandal
Firsts
Vulgar
First
Gentleman
Souls
Noble
Brave
Venal
Therefore
Rebuke

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What we love to do we find time to do.
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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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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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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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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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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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It is difficult to be sure of our friends, but it is possible to be certain of our loyalty to them.
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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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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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They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
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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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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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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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The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.
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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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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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The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
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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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Worry, whatever its source, weakens, takes away courage, and shortens life.
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The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.
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