Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown, – or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.
On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.
There is nothing so costly as ignorance.
We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. Whoever yields to temptation debases himself with a debasement from which he can never arise.
We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life’s existence.
We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.
Biography, especially of the great and good, who have risen by their own exertions to eminence and usefulness, is an inspiring and ennobling study. Its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.
Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land, as the sower sows his wheat-field.
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.
Injustice alone can shake down the pillars of the skies, and restore the reign of Chaos and Night.
He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.
Patient perseverance in well doing is infinitely harder than a sudden and impulsive self-sacrifice.
In dress, seek the middle between foppery and shabbiness.
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.
The most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with other people.
Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken.
The most ignorant are the most conceited.
The best teachers teach from the heart, not the book.