“Every boy is good for something.  If he cannot write iambics or excel in Latin prose, he has at least eyes, and a hand, and ears.  Turn him into the carpenter’s shop, make him a botanist or a chemist, encourage him to express himself in music,”—such used to be his words; “and if he fails all round here, at least he shall learn to read in public clearly his mother-tongue, and write thoughtfully an English essay.”  But one thing from first to last Thring taught and wrought for.  The boys he dealt with should be dealt with as individuals, and not as masses….  Character was what he aimed at, and character it was his pre-eminently to give.  Fearless for truth, and willing, for what he felt to be right, to stand alone against public or private criticism, as he was, boys left Uppingham with the feeling that popular theories and fashion were not always to be trusted, that each must think for himself, and dare to do the right and think the right, in scorn of consequences.  “I don’t want you lads to win dazzling honours; I want you to be dazzlingly honourable,” he would say.  “We cannot all be racers, but that is no reason why the tortoise should be forgotten.”  

(Spectator, 60 (29 October 1887), 1452)