Horace Mann Quotes

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.

I look upon Phrenology as the guide to philosophy and the handmaid of Christianity. Whoever disseminates true Phrenology is a public benefactor.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

Where a love of natural beauty has been cultivated, all nature becomes a stupendous gallery, as much superior in form and in coloring to the choicest collections of human art, as the heavens are broader and loftier than the Louvre or the Vatican.

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.

Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.

A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.

Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of one's self. We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence. The heart that goes out of itself, gets large and full of joy. This is the great secret of the inner life. We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.

In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms' banquet.

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

So, in the infinitely nobler battle in which you are engaged against error and wrong, if ever repulsed or stricken down, may you always be solaced and cheered by the exulting cry of triumph over some abuse in Church or State, some vice or folly in society, some false opinion or cruelty or guilt which you have overcome! And I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

In what pagan nation was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims as are offered to this Moloch of Christendom, intemperance.

Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.

Under the sublime law of progress, the present outgrows the past. The great heart of humanity is heaving with the hopes of a brighter day. All the higher instincts of our nature prophesy its approach; and the best intellects of the race are struggling to turn that prophecy into fulfilment.

New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color.

The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.

Observation - activity of both eyes and ears.

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.

You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect.

Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan.

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.

Keep one thing in view forever- the truth; and if you do this, though it may seem to lead you away from the opinion of men, it will assuredly conduct you to the throne of God.

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.