Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 1119 |
| AUTHOR: | Horace Mann (1796–1859) |
| QUOTATION: | More will sometimes be demanded of you than is reasonable. Bear it meekly, and exhaust your time and strength in performing your duties, rather than in vindicating your rights. Be silent, even when you are misrepresented. Turn aside when opposed, rather than confront opposition with resistance. Bear and forbear, not defending yourselves, so much as trusting to your works to defend you. Yet, in counselling you thus, I would not be understood to be a total non-resistant;—a perfectly passive, non-elastic sand-bag, in society; but I would not have you resist until the blow be aimed, not so much at you, as, through you, at the sacred cause of human improvement, in which you are engaged,—a point at which forbearance would be allied to crime. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Mann served in Congress 1848–1853. |
| SUBJECTS: | Living |