Horace Mann (1796–1859) was an American education reformist. As a politician he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1827 to 1833. He served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1834 to 1837. In 1848, after serving as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education since its creation, he was elected to the US House of Representatives. Mann was a brother-in-law to author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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Habit is a cable.—We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Habit
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.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Virtue
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
—Horace Mann
Topics: One liners, Manners
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
Topics: Correction, Children, Reform
More will sometimes be demanded of you than is reasonable. Bear it meekly, and exhaust your time and strength in performing your duties, rather than in vindicating your rights. Be silent, even when you are misrepresented. Turn aside when opposed, rather than confront opposition with resistance. Bear and forbear, not defending yourselves, so much as trusting to your works to defend you. Yet, in counseling you thus, I would not be understood to be a total non-resistant; a perfectly passive, non-elastic sand-bag, in society; but I would not have you resist until the blow be aimed, not so much at you, as, through you, at the sacred cause of human improvement, in which you are engaged, a point at which forbearance would be allied to crime.
—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
Topics: Time, Value of Time, Time Management
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann
Topics: Happiness
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