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.
Few know the joys that spring from a disinterested curiosity. It is like a cheerful spirit that leads us through worlds filled with what is true and fair, which we admire and love because it is true and fair.
Altruism is a barbarism. Love is the word.
If we attempt to sink the soul in matter, its light is quenched.
It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being, leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business.
The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.
As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind.
If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers ... must so deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this, nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that we live with God and that righteousness is life.
Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.
Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.
If thou need money, get it in an honest way—by keeping books, if thou wilt, but not by writing books.
The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God.
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.
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.
In giving us dominion over the animal kingdom God has signified His will that we subdue the beast within ourselves.
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.
Taste, of which the proverb says there should be no dispute, is precisely the subject which needs discussion.
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.
The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions.