Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Interpretation
Virtue alone is not enough; one must seek knowledge to truly understand and achieve one's goals.
This quote by Horace Mann emphasizes the idea that while being virtuous is important, it is not sufficient on its own to navigate life successfully. Virtue is portrayed as a blind angel, suggesting that without knowledge and understanding, virtue lacks direction and clarity, highlighting the necessity of seeking knowledge to realize one's potential and reach oneβs goals.
In practice
During a seminar on personal growth, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of continuous learning.
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.
Genius may conceive but patient labor must consummate.
Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.
On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.
The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit. It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that; for it is true we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct.
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
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