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.
Your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.
I resolved to move just a little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all times.
A Man of Knowledge like a rich Soil, feeds If not a world of Corn, a world of Weeds.
Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.
The myriad things are complete in us. There is no greater joy than to reflect on ourselves and become sincere.
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