Top 185 Quotes & Sayings by Horace Mann - Page 2

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.

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.

It is well, when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst the multitude! Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our government.

Truths, no matter how momentous or enduring, are nothing to the individual until he appreciates them, and feels their force, and acknowledges their sovereignty. He cannot bow to their majesty until he sees their power. All the blind then, and all the ignorant--that is, all the children--must be educated up to the point of perceiving and admitting the truth, and acting according to its mandates.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

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.

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.

Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.

One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.

If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.

We conceive of immortality as having a beginning, but no end; but we conceive of eternity as having neither beginning nor end. Hence it is proper to speak of eternity as the attribute of God, but of immortality as the attribute of man.

When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.

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

Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms.

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.

As all truth is from God, it necessarily follows that true science and true religion can never be at variance.

We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life's existence.

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.

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.

The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.

An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.

If there is anything for which I would go back to childhood, and live this weary life over again, it is for the burning, exalting, transporting thrill and ecstasy with which the young faculties hold their earliest communion with knowledge.

Of all "rights" which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.

NO error is infused into the young mind, to lie there dormant, or to be reproduced only when the subject of thought or action recurs to which the error belongs; but the error becomes a model or archetype, after whose likeness the active powers of the mind create a thousand other errors.

A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.

Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.

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.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

The education already given to the people creates the necessity of giving them more.

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,--life in the public streets.

Thank Heaven, the female heart is untenantable by atheism.

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

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.

The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward.

Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension.

Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth; And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.

In trying to teach children a great deal in a short time, they are treated not as though the race they were to run was for life, but simply a three-mile heat.

The living soul of man, once conscious of its power, cannot be quelled.

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

There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.

Deeds survive the doers.

To know the machine one must know where each part belongs, and what its office is.

Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to the theory. As the children now are, so will the sovereigns soon be.

When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance for his offence, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one's own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom.

Benevolence is a world of itself -- a world which mankind, as yet, have hardly begun to explore. We have, as it were, only skirted along its coasts for a few leagues, without penetrating the recesses, or gathering the riches of its vast interior.

Ignorance has been well represented under the similitude of a dungeon, where, though it is full of life, yet darkness and silence reign. But in society the bars and locks have been broken; the dungeon itself is demolished; the prisoners are out; they are in the midst of us. We have no security but to teach and renovate them.

Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect.

The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart.

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

The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

As each generation comes into the world devoid of knowledge, its first duty is to obtain possession of the stores already amassed. It must overtake its predecessors before it can pass by them.

Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.

When the panting and thirsting soul first drinks the delicious waters of truth, when the moral and intellectual tastes and desires first seize the fragrant fruits that flourish in the garden of knowledge, then does the child catch a glimpse and foretaste of heaven.