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The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.

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
Hope
Life
Utter
Vanity
Doctrine
Despair

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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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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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Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
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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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The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.
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Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts.
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We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
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Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption
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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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We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
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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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The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.
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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.
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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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