Horace Mann Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

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
Good books are to the young mind what the warming sun and the refreshing rain of spring are to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of winter. They are more, for they may save from that which is worse than death, as well as bless with that which is better than life.

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
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
The poniard and the stiletto were once the resource of a murderous spirit; now the vengeance, which formerly would assassinate in the dark, libels character, in the light of day, through the medium of the press. But through this instrumentality good can be wrought as well as evil.

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

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

Horace Mann
Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure can also agonize with pain.

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

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
There is nothing derogatory in any employment which ministers to the well-being of the race. It is the spirit that is carried into an employment that elevates or degrades it.

Horace Mann
The wealth which breeds idleness…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-worm's banquet.

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

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
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.

Horace Mann
But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge.

Horace Mann
Common sense is better than genius, and hence its bestowment is more universal.

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

Horace Mann
They who set an example make a highway. Others follow the example, because it is easier to travel on a highway than over untrodden grounds. As the mind becomes habituated to travel on the great thoroughfares which example makes, it seems even unnatural to leave them.

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
No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.

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

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
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
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
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
We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.

Horace Mann