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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.

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
Harbors
Piety
Thus
Angel
Devil
Instead
Mistake
Spirit
Harbor

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One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.
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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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In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
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The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is
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The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.
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If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
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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.
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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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Insight makes argument ridiculous.
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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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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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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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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 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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In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
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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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They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
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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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As our power over others increases, we become less free for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.
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The common man is impelled and controlled by interests the superior, by ideas.
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