James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Horace Mann
Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.
Deeds survive the doers.
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.
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.
Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it.
Habit is a cable. We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle.
It is more difficult, and calls for higher energies of the soul, to live a martyr than to die one.
Let but the public mind once become thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty, or life by mere force of laws written on parchment will be as vain as putting up printed notices in an orchard to keep off canker-worms.
Manners are the root, laws only the branches.
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Reproof is a medicine like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.
Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
Teaching has not a tithe of the efficacy of training.
The pulpit only “teaches” to be honest; the market-place “trains” to over-reaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training.
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. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness: ready to forge cannon-balls or to print New Testaments; to navigate a corsair’s vessel or a missionary ship.
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.”
Wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country (America), 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.
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.
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.