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
Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.
—Hannah More
Topics: Luxury, Wealth
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
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
Usually obstacles are the things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
—Hannah More
Topics: Vision, Aspirations, Goal, Goals, Obstacles, Difficulty
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
In agony or danger, no nature is atheist.—The mind that knows not what to fly to, flies to God.
—Hannah More
Topics: Atheism
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
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
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: Education, School
To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.
—Hannah More
Topics: Manners
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Opera
The secret heart is devotion’s temple; there the saint lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen but not unaccepted.
—Hannah More
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
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
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
Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Love, Absence
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
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
Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.
—Hannah More
Topics: Prayer
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
Perish discretion when it interferes with duty.
—Hannah More
Topics: Judging, Duty, Judgment
Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it.
—Hannah More
Topics: Trouble, Trials
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
Our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own; nor his infinite perfections as much as our smallest wants.
—Hannah More
Topics: Selfishness
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
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
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
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
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