Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah Morewas an English religious writer and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical philanthropist...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 February 1745
vanity contentment looks
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.
prayer eloquence compunction
Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.
hate enemy should
If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.
vanity faults littles
There is scarcely any fault in another which offends us more than vanity, though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little.
time may fetch
he who finds he has wasted a shilling may by diligence hope to fetch it up again; but no repentance or industry can ever bring back one wasted hour.
mistake thinking practice
nothing is more common than to mistake the sign for the thing itself; nor is any practice more frequent than that of endeavoring to acquire the exterior mark, without once thinking to labor after the interior grace.
pleasure vocation trade
Pleasure is by much the most laborious trade I know, especially for those who have not a vocation to it.
praise substitutes right-thing
Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.
prayer rain blessing
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.
humble sleep pride
Pride never sleeps. The principle at least is always awake. An intemperate man is sometimes sober, but a proud man is never humble.
mind needs repentance
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.
ubiquity support nerves
The ubiquity of the Divine presence is the only true support, and I am sometimes astonished how persons, who evidently do not possess that grand source of consolation, keep up their spirits under trials and difficulties. It must be owing to careless tempers and nerves of brass.
religious memories heart
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.
religious memories heart
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.