Horace Mann Quotes

The intellect is the light of the mind. The appetites, impulses, affections, sentiments,— whatever we please to call them,— have their objects of desire; but they know not how to obtain them. The intellect points out or devises the means by which their ends can be reached. They inform the intellect what they want; the intellect discerns and adopts the measures necessary to their gratification. The intellect performs the office of a pilot; but what shall become of the vessel and its treasures, if the pilot is blind?

No man has the right to bring up children without surrounding them with books.

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.

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.

A house without books is like a room without windows.

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.

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

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."

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.

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

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

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.

The best teachers teach from the heart, not the book.

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

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.