"Men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If, on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means, I find the reason why he has cheap carpets and very plain furniture to be that he may purchase books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books are not made for furniture but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house."

“Lawrence A. Cremin, Horace Mann, Encyclopaedia Britannica.”

“Forts, arsenals, garrisons, armies, navies, are means of security and defence, which were invented in half-civilized times and in feudal or despotic countries; but schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications, and if they are dismantled and dilapidated, ignorance and vice will pour in their legions through every breach.”

“Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.”

“A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.”

“He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in the highest attributes of humanity.”

“No matter how seemingly unconnected with human affairs or remote from human interests a newly-discovered truth may appear to be, time and genius will some day make it minister to human welfare. When Dr. Franklin was once sceptically asked what was the use of some recondite and far-off truth which had just been brought to light, "What," said he, "is the use of babies?”