Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

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

Superiority to circumstances is one of the most prominent characteristics of great men.

False conclusions which have been reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulse.

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect.

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.

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

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

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

If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.

Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land as the sower sows his wheatfield.

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

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

If temperance prevails, then education can prevail; if temperance fails, then education must fail.

Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.

Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!

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

Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young.

You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it; but let all you tell be truth.

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

Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.

Of all "rights" which command attention at the present time among us, woman's rights seem to take precedence.

Love not only occupies the higher lobes of the brain, but crowds out the lower to make room for its expansion.

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

Every event in this world is the effect of some precedent cause, and also the cause of some subsequent effect.

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

Reproof is a medicine, like mercury or opium; if it be improperly administered, it will do harm instead of good.

Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.

We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

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

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion. Truth seeks light instead of shunning it.

The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

It would be more honourable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more.

Education must bring the practice as nearly as possible to the theory. As the children now are, so will the sovereigns soon be.

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.

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.

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.

The earth endured Christ's ministry only three years;--not three weeks after his real character and purposes were generally known.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

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

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.

Share This Page