Frases de John Lancaster Spalding

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“Assim como a memória pode ser um paraíso do qual não podemos ser levados, ela pode também ser um infermo do qual não conseguimos escapar.”

“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.”

“The teacher does best, not when he explains, but when he impels his pupils to seek themselves the explanation.”

“Whom little things occupy and keep busy, are little men.”

“As we can not love what is hateful, let us accustom ourselves neither to think nor to speak of disagreeable things and persons.”

“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.”

“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.”

“As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right without thinking whether or not it shall be known.”

“Great deeds and utterances are now so diluted with printer’s ink that we can no longer find a sage or saint. Our worthiest men are exhibited and bewritten until they are made as uninteresting as clowns.”

“When pleasure is made a business, it ceases to be pleasure.”

“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.”

“The best money can procure for thee is freedom to live in thy true self. It is more apt however to enslave than to liberate. It is good also when thou makest it a means to help thy fellow men; but here too it is easier to harm than to benefit: for the money thou givest another is useful to him only when it stimulates him to self-activity.”

“Have as little suspicion as possible and conceal that.”

“If truth make us not truthful, what service can it render us?”

“O brave youth, how good for thee it were couldst thou be made to understand how infinitely precious are thy school years—years when thou hast leisure to grow, when new worlds break in upon thee, and thou fashionest thy being in the light of the ideals of truth and goodness and beauty! If now thou dost not fit thyself to become free and whole, thou shalt, when the doors of this fair mother-house of the mind, close behind thee, be driven into ways that lead to bondage, be compelled to do that which cripples and dwarfs; for the work whereby men gain a livelihood involves mental and moral mutilation, unless it be done in the spirit of religion and culture. Ah! well for thee, canst thou learn while yet there is time that it will profit thee nothing to become the possessor of millions, if the price thou payest is thy manhood.”

“Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.”

“We neglect the opportunities which are always present, and imagine that if those that are rare were offered, we should put them to good use. Thus we waste life waiting for what if it came we should be unprepared for.”

“We are made ridiculous less by our defects than by the affectation of qualities which are not ours.”

“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.”

“The test of the worth of work is its effect on the worker. If it degrade him, it is bad; if it ennoble him, it is good.”

“They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.”

“Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.”

“They who no longer believe in principles still proclaim them, to conceal, both from themselves and others, the selfishness of the motives by which they are dominated.”

“If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything.”

“Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue.”

“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.”

“Nothing requires so little mental effort as to narrate or follow a story. Hence everybody tells stories and the readers of stories outnumber all others.”

“What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other.”

“It is not difficult to grasp and express thoughts that float on the stream of current opinion: but to think and rightly utter what is permanently true and interesting, what shall appeal to the best minds a thousand years hence, as it appeals to them to-day,—this is the work of genius.”

“To how much lying, extravagance, hypocrisy and servilism does not the fear of ridicule lead? Human respect makes us cowards and slaves. It may deter from evil, but much oftener it drives to baseness. “We are too much afraid,” said Cato, “of death, exile and poverty.””