John Lancaster Spalding on Mind

"Since the mass of mankind are too ignorant or too indolent to think seriously, if majorities are right it is by accident."

"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."

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

"Education would be a divine thing, if it did nothing more than help us to think and love great thoughts instead of little thoughts."

"When the mind has grasped the matter, words come like flowers at the call of spring."

"As display is vulgar, so fondness for jewelry is evidence of an uncultivated mind."

"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."

"Not to be able to utter one’s thought without giving offence, is to lack culture."

"What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow."

"It is more profitable to be mindful of our own faults than of those of our age."

"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."

"Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind."

"Mercenary is whoever thinks less of his work than of the money he receives for doing it; and social conditions which impose tasks that make this inevitable are barbarous."

"One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant."

"The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality, color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world."

"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."

"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."