John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.

When it comes to understanding and appreciating grace, our biggest problem is our so-called goodness...not our self-perceived badness.

To be proud of virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.

It is the property of a great and good mind to covet, not the fruit of good deeds, but good deeds themselves, and to seek for a good man even after having met with bad men.

It's easier to swoon in pious dreams Than do good actions.

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with't

There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but everyone forgets the second half of that quote: the road to heaven is paved with good actions.

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.

The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.

One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

I am much more afraid of my good deeds that please me than of my bad deeds that repel me.

When one becomes conscious of his great humility, he has already lost it. When one begins boasting of his humility, it has already become pride-the antithesis of humility.

We are never more self-righteous than when giving up what we should have shunned all along.

The worst form of badness is human goodness when human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth.

Unto each man comes a day when his favorite sins all forsake him, And he complacently thinks he has forsaken his sins.

He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.

It is not enough simply to try to resist evil or empty our lives of sin. We must also fill our lives with righteousness

The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.

This grace (purity of intention) is so excellent that it sanctifies the most common actions of our life and yet is so necessary that without it, the very best actions of our devotion are imperfect and vicious.

The real trouble is that 'kindness' is a quality fatally easy to attribute to ourselves on quite inadequate grounds. Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment. Thus a man easily comes to console himself for all his other vices by a conviction that 'his heart's in the right place' and 'he wouldn't hurt a fly,' though in fact he has never made the slightest sacrifice for a fellow creature. We think we are kind when we are only happy: it is not so easy, on the same grounds, to imagine oneself temperate, chaste, or humble.

Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.