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.
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
Here I and sorrows sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
Where it gets weird is that nowadays there are millions of people on this earth who call themselves followers of Jesus, but their lives look nothing like His, and they're not obeying the things that He called them to do.
Holiness is doing God's will with a smile.
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
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