Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Interpretation
Helping others ultimately benefits ourselves, as interconnectedness is key to our humanity.
Horace Mann's quote emphasizes the importance of altruism and service to others, suggesting that neglecting the needs of others undermines our own existence and essence. It highlights the interconnectedness of humanity, where our actions toward others reflect on our own character and well-being.
In practice
In a speech about community service, this quote can inspire volunteers to understand the value of their contributions.
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.
To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.
This is a mad planet," David Bowie said in 1971. "It's doomed to madness.
To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.
Holiness is the strength of the soul. It comes by faith and through obedience to God's laws and ordinances. God then purifies the heart by faith, and the heart becomes purged from that which is profane and unworthy. When holiness is achieved by conforming to God's will, one knows intuitively that which is wrong and that which is right before the Lord. Holiness speaks when there is silence, encouraging that which is good or reproving that which is wrong.
Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?" "Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.
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