Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Love, Absence
How goodness heightens beauty!
—Hannah More
Topics: Beauty
A sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action. It is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies and providing against them; it is expecting contingencies and being prepared for them.
—Hannah More
Topics: Economy
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.
—Hannah More
Topics: Employment
Small habits well pursued betimes may reach the dignity of crimes.
—Hannah More
Topics: Habits
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
To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.
—Hannah More
Topics: Manners
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
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
The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion; makes the thought start into instant action, and at once plans and performs, resolves, and executes!
—Hannah More
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction
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 is in darkness.
—Hannah More
Topics: Genius
The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Books, Reading
A life devoted to trifles, not only takes away the inclination, but the capacity for higher pursuits. The truths of Christianity have scarcely more influence on a frivolous than on a profligate character.
—Hannah More
Topics: Trifles
My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.
—Hannah More
Topics: School, Education
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
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
—Hannah More
Topics: Idleness, Laziness
A Christian will find it cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
—Hannah More
Topics: Forgiveness
Life though a short, is a working day. “Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.
—Hannah More
Topics: Action
If I wanted to punish an enemy it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.
—Hannah More
Topics: Hatred
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
Perfect purity, fulness of joy, everlasting freedom, perfect rest, health, and fruition, complete security, substantial and eternal good.
—Hannah More
Topics: Heaven
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.
—Hannah More
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
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.
—Hannah More
Topics: Faith
In men this blunder still you find, all think their little set mankind.
—Hannah More
Topics: Man
Christian beneficence takes a large sweep; that circumference cannot be small of which God is the centre.
—Hannah More
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
Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.
—Hannah More
Topics: Wealth, Luxury
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
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
Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.
—Hannah More
Topics: Economy
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
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
Forgiveness is the economy of the heart… Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.
—Hannah More
Topics: Forgiveness
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Opera
Perish discretion when it interferes with duty.
—Hannah More
Topics: Judging, Duty, Judgment
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
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: Idleness, Action
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 few can save or serve, but all may please: let the ungentle spirit learn from thence, a small unkindness is a great offense.
—Hannah More
Topics: Kindness, Trifles
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