223 Quotes by Horace Mann

Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.

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.

You may as well borrow a person’s money as his time.

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.

Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one’s condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.

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.

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

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.

We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life’s existence.