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.
The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct.
What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others.
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.
True readers ... are ready to go through a whole volume, if there be but hope of finding in it a single genuine thought or the mere suggestion even of a truth which has some fresh application to life.
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.
There are who mistake the spirit of pugnacity for the spirit of piety, and thus harbor a devil instead of an angel.
In our thrifty populations of merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and professional men, there is little sense for beauty, little pure thought, little genuine culture; but they are prosperous and self-satisfied.
The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.
If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.
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.
Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.
We may outgrow the things of children, without acquiring sense and relish for those which become a man.
There are faults which show heart and win hearts, while the virtue in which there is no love, repels.
The mind perceives ... that it is higher than institutions, which are but the woof and web of its thought and will, which it weaves and outgrows, and weaves again.
God has not made a world which suits all; how shall a sane man expect to please all?
What we acquire with joy, we possess with indifference.
A gentleman does not appear to know more or to be more than those with whom he is thrown into company.
They who can no longer unlearn have lost the power to learn.
If science were nothing more than the best means of teaching the love of the simple fact, the indispensable need of verification, of careful and accurate observation and statement, its value would be of the highest order.
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.