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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.

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
Human
Generous
Humans
Pursuit
Mind
Brave
Men
Save
Pestilence
Love
Danger
Toil
Life
Goes
Flood
Fire
Follows
Truth
Frightened

More quotes by John Lancaster Spalding

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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative.
John Lancaster Spalding
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The able have no desire to appear to be so, and this is part of their ability.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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The study of law is valuable as a mental discipline, but the practice of pleading tends to make one petty, formal, and insincere. To be driven to look to legality rather than to equity blurs the view of truth and justice.
John Lancaster Spalding
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Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.
John Lancaster Spalding
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The ploughman knows how many acres he shall upturn from dawn to sunset: but the thinker knows not what a day may bring forth.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
John Lancaster Spalding
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Faith, like love, unites opinion, like hate, separates.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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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There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
John Lancaster Spalding
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The highest strength is acquired not in overcoming the world, but in overcoming one's self. Learn to be cruel to thyself, to withstand thy appetites, to bear thy sufferings, and thou shalt become free and able.
John Lancaster Spalding
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Insight makes argument ridiculous.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding
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We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.
John Lancaster Spalding
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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.
John Lancaster Spalding