Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

Forts, arsenals, garrisons, armies, navies, are means of security and defence, which were invented in half-civilized times and in feudal or despotic countries; but schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications, and if they are dismantled and dilapidated, ignorance and vice will pour in their legions through every breach.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals. As childhood advances to manhood, the transition from bad manners to bad morals is almost imperceptible. Vulgar and obscene forms of speech keep vulgar and obscene objects before the mind, engender impure images in the imagination, and make unlawful desires prurient. From the prevalent state of the mind, actions proceed, as water rises from a fountain.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

Observation — activity of both eyes and ears.

— Horace Mann

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.

— Horace Mann

We put things in order — God does the rest. Lay an iron bar east and west, it is not magnetized. Lay it north and south and it is.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

Whether a young man shall reap pleasure or pain from winning the objects of his choice, depends, not only upon his wisdom or folly in selecting those objects, but upon the right or wrong methods by which he pursues them. Hence, a knowledge what to select and how to pursue, is as necessary to the highest happiness as virtue herself. Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask of Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the highest attributes of humanity.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

Men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If, on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means, I find the reason why he has cheap carpets and very plain furniture to be that he may purchase books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books are not made for furniture but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

— Horace Mann

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind.

— Horace Mann

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. 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.

— Horace Mann

If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital. As Satan said, "Evil, be thou my good," so they say, "Darkness, be thou my light."

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

No matter how seemingly unconnected with human affairs or remote from human interests a newly-discovered truth may appear to be, time and genius will some day make it minister to human welfare. When Dr. Franklin was once sceptically asked what was the use of some recondite and far-off truth which had just been brought to light, "What," said he, "is the use of babies?"

— Horace Mann

Just in proportion as a man becomes good, divine, Christ-like, he passes out of the region of theorizing, of system-building, and hireling service, into the region of beneficent activities. It is well to think well. It is divine to act well.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

Physics is the Science of Matter; Metaphysics the Science of Mind — the Science of Being, apart from accidents and properties — Ontology.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

Evil and good are God's right hand and left.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann

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.

— Horace Mann