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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing.

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.

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.

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.

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail.

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

You may be liberal in your praise where praise is due: it costs nothing; it encourages much.

Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.

It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.

Praise begets emulation,--a goodly seed to sow among youthful students.