How goodness heightens beauty!
—Hannah More
Topics: Beauty
It is a sober truth that people who live only to amuse themselves, work harder at the task than most people do in earning their daily bread.
—Hannah More
It is not so important to know everything as to know the exact value of everything, to appreciate what we learn, and to arrange what we know.
—Hannah More
Topics: Knowledge
Small habits well pursued betimes may reach the dignity of crimes.
—Hannah More
Topics: Habits
Love never reasons but profusely gives; gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles lest it has done too little.
—Hannah More
Topics: Love, Helping
The wretch who digs the mine for bread, or ploughs, that others may be fed, feels less fatigued than that decreed to him who cannot think or read.
—Hannah More
Topics: Education
There are three requisites to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings: a thankful reflection, on the goodness of the giver; a deep sense of our own unworthiness; and a recollection of the uncertainty of our long possessing them—The first will make us grateful; the second, humble; and the third, moderate.
—Hannah More
Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Absence, Love
To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.
—Hannah More
Topics: Manners
Sensibility is neither good, nor evil in itself, but in its application.—Under the influence of Christian principle it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation.
—Hannah More
Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good.
—Hannah More
Topics: Action, Idleness
Oh, the joy of young ideas painted on the mind, in the warm, glowing colors fancy spreads on objects not yet known, when all is new and all is lovely!
—Hannah More
Topics: Youth
So weak is man, so ignorant and blind, that did not God sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, we should be ruined at our own request.
—Hannah More
Topics: Prayer
If I wanted to punish an enemy it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.
—Hannah More
Topics: Hatred
Christian beneficence takes a large sweep; that circumference cannot be small of which God is the centre.
—Hannah More
O, Jealousy, thou ugliest fiend of hell! thy deadly venom preys on my vitals, turns the healthful hue of my fresh cheek to haggard sallowness, and drinks my spirit up.
—Hannah More
Topics: Jealousy
When you are disposed to be vain of your mental acquirements, look up to those who are more accomplished than yourself, that you may be fired with emulation; but when you feel dissatisfied with your circumstances, look down on those beneath you, that you may learn contentment.
—Hannah More
Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it was its continuance which should have taught us its value.
—Hannah More
Topics: Blessings
The education of the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness.—For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character.—That which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife.
—Hannah More
Topics: Education
Adulation is the death of virtue.—Who flatters, is, of all mankind, the lowest, save he who courts the flattery.
—Hannah More
Topics: Flattery
The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we to our passions, that we suffer more to insure perdition than salvation. Religion does not forbid the rational enjoyments of life as sternfy as avarice forbids them. She does not require such sacrifices of ease as ambition; or such renunciation of quiet as pride. She does not murder sleep like dissipation; or health like intemperance; or scatter wealth like extravagance or gambling. She does not embitter life like discord; or shorten it like duelling; or harrow it like revenge. She does not impose more vigilance than suspicion; mere anxiety than selfishness; or half as many mortifications as vanity!
—Hannah More
Topics: Vice
Perish discretion when it interferes with duty.
—Hannah More
Topics: Duty, Judging, Judgment
There is one single fact which we may oppose to all the wit and argument of infidelity, namely, that no man ever repented of being a Christian on his death-bed.
—Hannah More
A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.
—Hannah More
Topics: Applause
The soul on earth is an immortal guest, compelled to starve at an unreal feast; a pilgrim panting for the rest to come; an exile, anxious for his native home.
—Hannah More
Topics: Soul
If the one be good, the other must be evil. The only way to justify the stage, as it is, as it has ever been, as it is ever likely to be, is to condemn the Bible—the same individual cannot defend both.
—Hannah More
Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices.
—Hannah More
Topics: Luxury
Many works of fiction may be read with safety; some even with profit; but the constant familiarity, even with such as are not exceptionable in themselves, relaxes the mind, which needs hardening; dissolves the heart, which wants fortifying; stirs the imagination, which wants quieting; irritates the passions, which want calming; and, above all, disinclines and disqualifies for active virtues and for spiritual exercises. The habitual indulgence in such reading, is a silent mining mischief. Though there is no act, and no moment, in which any open assault on the mind is made, yet the constant habit performs the work of a mental atrophy—it produces all the symptoms of decay; and the danger is not less for being more gradual, and therefore less suspected.
—Hannah More
Topics: Romance, Fiction
Life though a short, is a working day. “Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.
—Hannah More
Topics: Action
The world does not require so much to be informed as reminded.
—Hannah More
Topics: Remembrance
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