Top 150 Horace Mann Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.”

— Horace Mann

102. “The most precious wine is produced upon the sides of volcanoes. Now bold and inspiring ideals are only born of a clear head that stands over a glowing heart.”

— Horace Mann

103. “In what pagan nation was Moloch ever propitiated by such an unbroken and swift-moving procession of victims as are offered to this Moloch of Christendom, intemperance.”

— Horace Mann

104. “The most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with other people.”

— Horace Mann

105. “Love – that divine fire which was made to light and warm the temple of home – sometimes burns at unholy altars.”

— Horace Mann

106. “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

107. “But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge.”

— Horace Mann

108. “Willmott has very tersely said that embellished truths are the illuminated alphabet of larger children.”

— Horace Mann

109. “In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness.”

— Horace Mann

110. “We conceive of immortality as having a beginning, but no end; but we conceive of eternity as having neither beginning nor end. Hence it is proper to speak of eternity as the attribute of God, but of immortality as the attribute of man.”

— Horace Mann

111. “Man is improvable. Some people think he is only a machine, and that the only difference between a man and a mill is, that one is carried by blood and the other by water.”

— Horace Mann

112. “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.”

— Horace Mann

113. “The earth endured Christ’s ministry only three years; – not three weeks after his real character and purposes were generally known.”

— Horace Mann

114. “True glory is a flame lighted at the skies.”

— Horace Mann

115. “You may be liberal in your praise where praise is due: it costs nothing; it encourages much.”

— Horace Mann

116. “We put things in order – God does the rest. Lay an iron bar east and west, it is not magnetized. Lay it north and south and it is.”

— Horace Mann

117. “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

118. “Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.”

— Horace Mann

119. “Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.”

— Horace Mann

120. “Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth; And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.”

— Horace Mann

121. “There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.”

— Horace Mann

122. “Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.”

— Horace Mann

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

— Horace Mann

124. “The education already given to the people creates the necessity of giving them more.”

— Horace Mann

125. “When will society, like a mother, take care of all her children?”

— Horace Mann

126. “As all truth is from God, it necessarily follows that true science and true religion can never be at variance.”

— Horace Mann

127. “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

128. “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. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”

— Horace Mann

129. “Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.”

— Horace Mann

130. “Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan.”

— Horace Mann

131. “New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.”

— Horace Mann

132. “The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world’s scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.”

— Horace Mann

133. “Want of occupation is the bane of both men and women, perhaps more especially of the latter.”

— Horace Mann

134. “Be careful never to retire to rest in a room not properly ventilated.”

— Horace Mann

135. “One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master’s command.”

— Horace Mann

136. “Common sense is better than genius, and hence its bestowment is more universal.”

— Horace Mann

137. “A teacher should, above all things, first induce a desire in the pupil for the acquisition he wishes to impart.”

— Horace Mann

138. “God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked.”

— Horace Mann

139. “The pulpit only “teaches” to be honest; the market-place “trains” to overreaching and fraud; and teaching has not a tithe of the efficiency of training. Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.”

— Horace Mann

140. “Love must be the same in all worlds.”

— Horace Mann

141. “Thank Heaven, the female heart is untenantable by atheism.”

— Horace Mann

142. “Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.”

— Horace Mann

143. “If you wish to write well, study the life about you, – life in the public streets.”

— Horace Mann

144. “Even the choicest literature should be taken as the condiment, and not as the sustenance of life. It should be neither the warp nor the woof of existence, but only the flowery edging upon its borders.”

— Horace Mann

145. “There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.”

— Horace Mann

146. “When you introduce into our schools a spirit of emulation, you have present the keenest spur admissible to the youthful intellect.”

— Horace Mann

147. “Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.”

— Horace Mann

148. “There is nothing derogatory in any employment which ministers to the well-being of the race. It is the spirit that is carried into an employment that elevates or degrades it.”

— Horace Mann

149. “There is not a good work which the hand of man has ever undertaken, which his heart has ever conceived, which does not require a good education for its helper.”

— Horace Mann

150. “The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.”

— Horace Mann