Horace Mann Quotes - Page 4

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

Deeds survive the doers.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

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.

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.

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.

Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.

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

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.

He who dethrones the idea of law, bids chaos welcome in its stead.

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.

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.

Love must be the same in all worlds.

After a child has arrived at the legal age for attending school,-whether he be the child of noble or of peasant,-the only two absolute grounds of exemption from attendance are sickness and death.

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

There is not a good work which the hand of man has ever undertaken, which his heart has ever conceived, which does not require a good education for its helper.

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

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

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.