Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English writer Hannah More.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Hannah More was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, who wrote on moral and religious subjects. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school her father founded there and began writing plays. She became involved in the London literary elite and a leading Bluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined a group opposing the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote Cheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics, to distribute to the literate poor. Meanwhile, she broadened her links with schools she and her sister Martha had founded in rural Somerset. These curbed their teaching of the poor, allowing limited reading but no writing. More was noted for her political conservatism, being described as an anti-feminist, a "counter-revolutionary", or a conservative feminist.
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.
If faith produce no works, I see That faith is not a living tree. Thus faith and works together grow, No separate life they never can know. They're soul and body, hand and heart, What God hath joined, let no man part.
Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
Depart from discretion when it interferes with duty.
Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.
Love never reasons, but profusely gives; it gives like a thoughtless prodigal its all, and then trembles least it has done to little.
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
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.
How short is human life! the very breath
Which frames my words accelerates my death.
When thou hast truly thanked the Lord for every blessing sent, But little time will then remain for murmur or lament.
One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act.
A small unkindness is a great offence.
We have employments assigned to us for every circumstance in life. When we are alone, we have our thoughts to watch; in the family, our tempers; and in company, our tongues.
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Everything which relates to God is infinite. We must therefore, while we keep our hearts humble, keep our aims high. Our highest services are indeed but finite, imperfect. But as God is unlimited in goodness, He should have our unlimited love.
All reformations seem formidable before they are attempted.
Man can see his reflection in water only when he bends down close to it, and the heart of man, too, must lean down to the heart of his fellow; then it will see itself within his heart.
In grief we know the worst of what we feel but who can tell the end of what we fear?
How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain, when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity!
The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure.
Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. There are three requisitions to the proper enjoyment of earthly blessings,--a thankful reflection on the goodness of the Giver, a deep sense of our unworthiness, a recollection of the uncertainty of long possessing them. The first would make us grateful; the second, humble; and the third, moderate.
I am persuaded that there is no affection of the human heart more exquisitely pure, than that which is felt by a grateful son towards a mother.
That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it
In agony or danger, no nature is atheist. The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God.
Small habits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes.
He who has once taken to drink can seldom be said to be guilty of one sin only.
Sweet is the breath of praise when given by those whose own high merit claims the praise they give.
No man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.
we live in an age which must be amused, though genius, feeling, trust, and principle be the sacrifice.
The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.
Repentance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it.
Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
The soul on earth is an immortal guest.
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.
We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.
Our merciful Father has no pleasure in the sufferings of His children; He chastens them in love; He never inflicts a stroke He could safely spare; He inflicts it to purify as well as to punish, to caution as well as to cure, to improve as well as to chastise.
it may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision. There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us.
I used to wonder why people should be so fond of the company of their physician, till I recollected that he is the only person with whom one dares to talk continually of oneself, without interruption, contradiction or censure; I suppose that delightful immunity doubles their fees.
The soul on earth is an immortal guest,
Compelled to starve at an unreal feast:
A spark, which upward tends by nature's force:
A stream diverted from its parent source;
A drop dissever'd from the boundless sea;
A moment, parted from eternity;
A pilgrim panting for the rest to come;
An exile, anxious for his native home.
The sober comfort, all the peace which springs from the large aggregate of little things.
He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself.
Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.
Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.
All desire the gifts of God, but they do not desire God.
What ascends up in prayer descends to us again in blessings. It is like the rain which just now fell, and which had been drawn up from the ground in vapors to the clouds before it descended from them to the earth in that refreshing shower.
The world does not require so much to be informed as to be reminded.
When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to act, we cannot bear a provoking word.
Where evil may be done, it is right to ponder; where only suffered, know the shortest pause is much too long.
Perfect purity, fullness of joy, everlasting freedom, perfect rest, health and fruition, complete security, substantial and eternal good.
We are apt to mistake our vocation by looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and by stepping over the ordinary ones that lie directly in the road before us.
Did not God Sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, We should be ruined at our own request.
Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.
Pride never sleeps. The principle at least is always awake. An intemperate man is sometimes sober, but a proud man is never humble.
Yes, thou art ever present, power divine; not circumscribed by time, nor fixed by space, confined to altars, nor to temples bound. In wealth, in want, in freedom, or in chains, in dungeons or on thrones, the faithful find thee.
Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.
Forgiveness saves the expense of anger.
If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.
After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections, it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury; and he who refuses the fewest gratifications to his own voluptuousness, will generally be found the least susceptible of tenderness for the wants of others.