"Rules of grammar can not give us a mastery of language, rules of rhetoric can not make us eloquent, rules of conduct can not make us good."

John Lancaster Spalding Literature See all quotes by John Lancaster Spalding →

React to this quote

More by John Lancaster Spalding

“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.”

“If thou canst not hold the golden mean, say and do too little rather than too much.”

“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.”

“When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.”

“Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.”

“It is a large part of learning to know what one wants, and where it may be found in its most authentic form.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.....As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-…"

— Sam Harris

Science1967

#writing

"That was the other thing that drew me to India-the language. In high school my Latin teacher taught me Greek unofficially on Monday nights. I loved Greek; I loved the idea that there was another scrip…"

— Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Religion1940

#education

"The fact that these principles, collected from the writings of half a dozen different people, many of whom made no attempt to correlate their work with others, can be presented in a coherent and logic…"

— Lyndall Urwick

Literature1891–1983

#truth