Hannah More Quotes

118 Sourced Quotes

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

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The idle, life's worst burthens bear,
And, what toil escapes, despair!

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Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation. But the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty.

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Is it not a fundamental error to consider children as innocent beings, whose little weaknesses may perhaps want some correction, rather than as beings who bring into the world a corrupt nature and evil dispositions, which it should be the great end of education to rectify?

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There is scarcely any fault in another which offends us more than vanity, though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little.

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It is the large aggregate of small things perpetually occurring that robs me of all my time. The expense of learning to read might have been spared in my education, for I never read.

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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.

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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.

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

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For you'll ne'er mend your fortunes, nor help the just cause,
By breaking of windows, or breaking of laws.

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Of two evils, had not an author better be tedious than superficial! From an overflowing vessel you may gather more, indeed, than you want, but from an empty one you can gather nothing.

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It is humbling to reflect, that in those countries in which the fondness for the mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess, they are slaves; and that their moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to mere external charms.

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

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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.

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Parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius.

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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.

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As he had always fancied that piety was a melancholy, gloomy thing, and as he felt his own mind really gloomy, he was willing to think that he was growing pious.

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Pride never sleeps. The principle at least is always awake. An intemperate man is sometimes sober, but a proud man is never humble.

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O jealousy, Thou ugliest fiend of hell! thy deadly venom Preys on my vitals, turns the healthful hue Of my flesh check to haggard sallowness, And drinks my spirit up!

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Commending a right thing is a cheap substitute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.

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Long habit so reconciles us to almost any thing, that the grossest improprieties cease to strike us when they once make a part of the common course of action.

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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.

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

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To those who know thee not, no words can paint!
And those who know thee, know all words are faint!

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I believe she would be jealous of a fine day, if her husband praised it.

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