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.
– Horace Mann
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
– Horace Mann
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
– Horace Mann
Avoid witicisms at the expense of others.
– Horace Mann
Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
– Horace Mann
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
– Horace Mann
Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
– Horace Mann
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
– Horace Mann
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
– Horace Mann
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
– Horace Mann
Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
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.
– Horace Mann
Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.
– Horace Mann
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
– Horace Mann
To pity distress is but human to relieve it is Godlike.
– Horace Mann
Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.