John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

So then, when I speak to you, I speak to myself. If I seem to warn or to rebuke you, it is not so much you, as myself, to whom the warning or the rebuke is addressed.

You cannot lead others until you have first learned to lead yourself.

How well I walk my talk, and not talk my talk, determines the quality of my engagement, of all my experience with what is quite personally my God. I'm my greatest teacher, and within me, I have the power to push myself deeper and higher.

When you locate good in yourself, approve of it with determination. When you locate evil in yourself, despise it as something detestable.

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

Find fault with thyself rather than with others.

Preach in your own house and to your own company

I'm highly critical of myself. There's not something someone else might say that makes me feel I need to be motivated in a different way. I'm a self-motivated guy.

I'm not saying I'm perfect. But I'm someone who analyses and reflects on what I do, whether it's in keeping with the ethics that I talk about in public. That's how I've been all my life.

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.

May we be as severe with ourselves over our own subtle sins as we are with the vile sins we condemn in others

For self is the lord of self, self is the refuge of self; therefore curb thyself as the merchant curbs a good horse.

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.

He who knows much about others may be learned, but he who understands himself is more intelligent. He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

I try to be a good person. I know what my downfalls are, so that's a good thing.

The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

The preacher's sharpest and strongest preaching should be to himself. His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with himself.

You can never control other people. You can only control yourself. I have definitely learned that.

The knowledge that we are responsible for living the life we have is our most powerful tool.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.