John Lancaster Spalding

“To be able to listen to others in a sympathetic and understanding manner is perhaps the most effective mechanism in the world for breaking down the barriers that divide people.”

“Our ideals are our better selves.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

“He who loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age will hardly love them enough afterward to understand them.”

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all to be right in doing it.”

“What we love is the best of us.”

“The test of a man is the way in which he bears himself in failure.”

“Habit is the deepest law of human nature.”

“The end of education is character.”

“To have a friend is to have another self.”

“The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance.”

“A true book is a living voice.”

“Culture is the passion for sweetness and light, and the passion for making them prevail.”

“To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.”

“The best work is done by the man who is not afraid of telling himself the truth.”

“We cannot remake the world, but we can remake ourselves.”

“The school is the chief means of building up a vital and enduring civilization.”