Horace Mann Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

Be sure of the fact, before you lose time in searching for a cause.

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.

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth.

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.

How strong that idea of improvement in the human mind, which is the companion, if it be not the condition of genius!— that ideality, I mean, which always runs ahead of actuality. Achievement is only the eminence whence we survey something better to be achieved. Ideality is only the avant-courier of the mind, and where that, in a healthy and normal state, goes, I hold it to be a prophecy that realization can follow.

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?"

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."

The intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing precious in the sight of God; and therefore, until this nature is cultivated, and enlightened, and purified, neither opulence, nor power, nor learning, nor genius, nor domestic sanctity, nor the holiness of God's altars, can ever be safe. Until the immortal and god-like capacities of every being that comes iuto the world are deemed more worthy, are watched more tenderly than any other thing, no dynasty of men, or form of government, can stand, or shall stand, upon the face of the earth; and the force or the fraud which would seek to uphold them, shall be but "as fetters of flax to bind the flame."

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up all the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

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.

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