Hannah More Quotes - Page 5

The artful injury, whose venomed dart scarce wounds the hearing, while it stabs the heart.

Resentment is an evil so costly to our peace that we should find it more cheap to forgive even were it no more right.

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.

Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.

Glory darts her soul-pervading ray on thrones and cottages, regardless still of all the artificial nice distinctions vain human customs make.

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

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.

oblivion has been noticed as the offspring of silence.

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

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.

The secret heart is fair devotion's temple; there the saint, even on that living altar, lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen, not unaccepted.

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

The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.

Youth has a quickness of apprehension, which it is very apt to mistake for an acuteness of penetration.

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

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

It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.

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

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.

My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments, the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.