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In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.

— Horace Mann

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Happiness

More quotes by Horace Mann

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.

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

The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore.

A Few Thoughts for a Young Man (1850)

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.

Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867)

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

Address at Antioch College (1859)

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The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

The key to self-generated happiness (the only reliable kind) is the refusal to take oneself too seriously.

Tom Robbins High Times interview (2002)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased — thus do we refute entropy.

Spider Robinson

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Horace Mann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.