Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
Interpretation
Pursuing truth leads to true greatness.
In this quote, Horace Mann emphasizes the importance of seeking truth rather than chasing after greatness for its own sake. He suggests that by focusing on understanding and embracing truth, one may inadvertently achieve greatness as a byproduct of this pursuit. This underscores the idea that authenticity and integrity are more valuable than the superficial accolades of success.
In practice
This quote could inspire students during a graduation speech about the importance of integrity over accolades.
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.
Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.
You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga, only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga is not for you.
One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room... _x000D_ Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not. _x000D_ The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.
Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement.
Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.
Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view.
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