John Lancaster Spalding (1840 – 1916)
First bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria from 1877 to 1908, a notable scholarly writer of the time and, a co-founder of The Catholic University of America.
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.
No occupation is more tiresome or depressing than that of killing time. It is the cause of lifeweariness, the punishment the soul inflicts upon itself when reduced to passiveness and servitude.
States of soul rightly expressed, as the poet expresses them in moments of pure inspiration, retain forever the power of creating like states. It is this that makes genuine literature a vital force.
There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.
In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.
If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?
If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.
When guests enter the room their entertainers rise to receive them; and in all meetings men should ascend into their higher selves, imparting to one another only the best they know and love.
What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.
If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?
The fields and the flowers and the beautiful faces are not ours, as the stars and the hills and the sunlight are not ours, but they give us fresh and happy thoughts.|
Work, mental or manual, is the means whereby attention is compelled, it is the instrument of all knowledge and virtue, the root whence all excellence springs.
They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.
Beauty lies not in the things we see, but in the soul.
Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.
The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.
To love the perfection with which we do our work, or the company of those with whom we work, is the secret of learning to love the work itself.
In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
Philosophers and theologians, like the vulgar, prefer contradiction to enlightenment. They refute one another more gladly than they learn from one another, as though man lived by shunning error and not by loving truth. Accept their formulas and they sink back into their easy chairs and comfortably doze.
The world is a mirror into which we look, and see our own image.