Quote collection
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"Both poetry and philosophy are prodigal of eulogy over the mind which ransoms itself by its own energy from a captivity to custom, which breaks the common bounds of empire, and cuts a Simplon over mountains of difficulty for its own purposes, whether of good or of evil."
"Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolate by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened."
"As an innovation... the establishment of Free Schools was the boldest ever promulgated, since the commencement of the Christian era... Time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, as beneficient as it was disinterested. It was one of those grand mental and moral experiments... The sincerity of our gratitude must be tested by our efforts to perpetuate and improve what they established. The gratitude of the lips only is an unholy offering."
"Be careful never to retire to rest in a room not properly ventilated."
"No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth."
"We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast."
"Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects."
"Love not only occupies the higher lobes of the brain, but crowds out the lower to make room for its expansion."
"So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!"
"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."
"Willmott has very tersely said that embellished truths are the illuminated alphabet of larger children."
"Common sense is better than genius, and hence its bestowment is more universal."
"If ever there was a cause, if ever there can be a cause, worthy to be upheld by all of toil or sacrifice that the human heart can endure, it is the cause of Education. It has intrinsic and indestructible merits. It holds the welfare of mankind in its embrace, as the protecting arms of a mother hold her infant to her bosom. The very ignorance and selfishness which obstructs its path are the strongest arguments for its promotion, for it furnishes the only adequate means for their removal."
"In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness."
"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."
"Avoid witticisms at the expense of others."
"On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it."
"The soul of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much in his own body. Its life, to a great extent, is a mere reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their bodies, and identifying its existence with their existence, finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains."
"God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked."
"Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth."