Hannah More Quotes

The sober comfort, all the peace which springs from the large aggregate of little things.

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 is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.

A crown! what is it? It is to bear the miseries of a people! To hear their murmurs, feel their discontents, And sink beneath a load of splendid care!

Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.

No man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.

There are only two bad things in this world, sin and bile.

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.

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.

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.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs; Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease, And though but few can serve, yet all may please; On, let th' ungentle spirit learn from hence, A small unkindness is a great offence.

Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.

The world does not require so much to be informed as to be reminded.

When thou hast truly thanked the Lord for every blessing sent, But little time will then remain for murmur or lament.

A small unkindness is a great offence.

No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery.

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.

Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains.

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

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.

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.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.

The soul on earth is an immortal guest.

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.

If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.

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.

A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.

Sweet is the breath of praise when given by those whose own high merit claims the praise they give.

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.

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.

How short is human life! the very breath Which frames my words accelerates my death.

Sow an action, reap a habit.

Forgiveness saves the expense of anger.

Love never reasons, but profusely gives, Gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, And trembles then, lest it has done too 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.

Imagination frames events unknown, In wild, fantastic shapes of hideous ruin, And what it fears creates.

If a young lady has that discretion and modesty without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more than on displaying what she has.

Small habits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes.

In grief we know the worst of what we feel but who can tell the end of what we fear?

Perish discretion, when it interferes With duty!

Gentleness is the outgrowth of benignity.

Rage is for little wrongs; despair is dumb.

Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.

The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.

All desire the gifts of God, but they do not desire God.

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.

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.

the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.

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