Horace Mann

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

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

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

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

Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

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

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

When a child can be brought to tears, and not from fear of punishment, but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart.

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

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.

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.