Top 35 Hannah Hurnard Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Behold me, here I am; thy little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy and all that is in my heart is thine.”

— Hannah Hurnard

2. “Love opens the eyes of our understanding and enables us to see more of the truth than can those who are blinded by self-love. Those who love most, see most.”

— Hannah Hurnard

3. “It is better to go stumbling, and weeping, and crawling like a worm along the way of love, than to give up and choose some other way.”

— Hannah Hurnard

4. “I am not fair save to the King, Though fair my royal dress, His kingly grace is lavished on My need and worthlessness. My blemishes he will not see But loves the beauty that shall be.”

— Hannah Hurnard

5. “God has made us for Himself, and our hearts can never know rest and perfect satisfaction until they find it in Him.”

— Hannah Hurnard

6. “The heart knoweth its own sorrow and there are times when, like David, it is comforting to think that our tears are put in a bottle and not one of them forgotten by the one who leads us in paths of sorrow.”

— Hannah Hurnard

7. “It means there are no obstacles which our Savior’s love cannot overcome, and that to him, mountains of difficulty are as easy as an asphalt road!”

— Hannah Hurnard

8. “Whenever you are willing to obey me, Much-Afraid, and to follow the path of my choice, you will always be able to hear and recognize my voice, and when you hear it you must always obey. Remember also that it is always safe to obey my voice, even if it seems to call you to paths which look impossible or even crazy.”

— Hannah Hurnard

9. “The High Places and the hinds’ feet do not refer to heavenly places after death, but are meant to be the glorious experience of God’s children here and now – if they will follow the path he chooses for them.”

— Hannah Hurnard

10. “I must tell you a great truth, Much-Afraid, which only the few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always those which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to Love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love.”

— Hannah Hurnard

11. “When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.”

— Hannah Hurnard

12. “Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet.”

— Hannah Hurnard

13. “The third thing that I learned was that you, my Lord, never regarded me as I actually was, lame and weak and crooked and cowardly. You saw me as I would be when you had done what you promised and had brought me to the High Places, when it could be truly said, ‘There is none that walks with such a queenly ease, nor with such grace, as she.’ You always treated me with.”

— Hannah Hurnard

14. “Accept and bear and obey the Law of Love, and nothing will be able to cripple your hinds’ feet or to separate you from me. This is the secret of the High Places, Grace and Glory, it is the lovely and perfect law of the whole universe. It is this that makes the radiant joy of the Heavenly Places.”

— Hannah Hurnard

15. “Many a quiet, ordinary, and hidden life, unknown to the world, is a veritable garden in which Love’s flowers and fruits have come to such perfection that it is a place of delight where the King of Love himself walks and rejoices with his friends.”

— Hannah Hurnard

16. “Make haste, Beloved, be thou like an hart On mountains spicy sweet; And I, on those High Places where thou art, Will follow on hinds’ feet; As close behind the hart, there leaps the roe, So where thou goest, I will surely go. That, as perhaps you know, is the last verse of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. But for Grace and Glory it was the beginning of a new song altogether.”

— Hannah Hurnard

17. “Then as she looked up in his face, he smiled most sweetly and said something he had never said before, “You have one real beauty, Much-Afraid, you have such trustful eyes. Trust is one of the much beautiful things in the world. When I look at the trust in your eyes I find you more beautiful to look upon than many a lovely queen.”

— Hannah Hurnard

18. “So remember this; as long as you are willing to be Acceptance-with-Joy and Bearing-in-Love, you can never again be crippled, and you will be able to go wherever I lead you. You will be able to go down into the Valley of the world to work with me there, for that is where the evil and sorrowful and ugly things are which need to be overcome.”

— Hannah Hurnard

19. “The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. “Nothing my Father and I have made is ever wasted,” he said quietly, “and the little wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous little song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return.”

— Hannah Hurnard

20. “You will be able to mount to the High Places swifter than eagles, for it is only up on the High Places of Love that anyone can receive the power to pour themselves down in an utter abandonment of self-giving.”

— Hannah Hurnard

21. “In all the world I have no one but you. Help me to follow you, even though it seems impossible. Help me to trust you as much as I long to love you.”

— Hannah Hurnard

22. “There are no obstacles which our Savior’s love cannot overcome. The High Places of victory and union with Christ can be reached by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by laying down of our own will and accepting His. The lessons of accepting and triumphing over evil, of becoming acquainted with grief, and pain, and of finding them transformed into something incomparably precious; these are the lessons of the allegory in this book.”

— Hannah Hurnard

23. “Love and Pain go together, for a time at least. If you would know Love, you must know pain too.”

— Hannah Hurnard

24. “Your reactions to your enemy can hurt you more than your enemy can.”

— Hannah Hurnard

25. “You may think that Much-Afraid was altogether too much given to shedding tears, but remember that she had Sorrow for a companion and teacher. There is this to be added, that her tears were all in secret, for no one but her enemies knew about this strange journey on which she had set out. The heart knoweth its own sorrow and there are times when, like David, it is comforting to think that our tears are put in a bottle and not one of them forgotten by the one who leads us in paths of sorrow. But.”

— Hannah Hurnard

26. “From bitter experience she knew that pictures thrown on the screen of her imagination could seem much more unnerving and terrible than the actual facts.”

— Hannah Hurnard

27. “She had the feeling that somehow, in the far-off ages, there would be a meaning found to all sorrow and an answer too fair and wonderful to be as yet understood.”

— Hannah Hurnard

28. “Those who love most, see most.”

— Hannah Hurnard

29. “The least temptation thou hast met. He knows thy blemishes and how To purge away the dross, Not overlong will he allow The anguish of thy cross. Love is the Judge, and he doth see The surest way to perfect thee. Thou can’st not perish if thou wilt But turn thee to the light, Love bleeds with thee in all thy guilt And waits to set thee right. Love means to save sin’s outcasts lost, And cares not at what awful cost.”

— Hannah Hurnard

30. “The Shepherd laughed too. “I love doing preposterous things,” he replied. “Why, I don’t know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection. If there is one thing more than mother which I should enjoy doing at this moment it is turning a jellyfish into a mountain goat.”

— Hannah Hurnard

31. “The awful glimpse down into the abyss of an existence without him had so staggered and appalled her heart that she felt she could never be quite the same again. However, it had opened her eyes to the fact that right down in the depths of her own heart she really had but one passionate desire, not for the things which the Shepherd had promised, but for himself. All she wanted was to be allowed to follow him forever.”

— Hannah Hurnard

32. “For he loves each one of us,” she said to herself, “as though there were only one to love.”

— Hannah Hurnard

33. “Then she looked at the Shepherd and suddenly knew she could not doubt him, could not possibly turn back from following him; that if she were unfit and unable to love anyone else in the world, yet in her trembling, miserable little heart, she did love him. Even if he asked the impossible, she could not refuse.”

— Hannah Hurnard

34. “It’s not Prayer that changes God... no, it changes us, and therein lies its glory and it’s purpose.”

— Hannah Hurnard

35. “Sorrow and Suffering withdrew a little, as they always did when the Shepherd was present, leaving him to talk with Much-Afraid alone.”

— Hannah Hurnard

36. “As for the other three, they have made off into some hiding place, and are not likely to trouble you again in the same way now that they realize that I am within call.”

— Hannah Hurnard

37. “As Christians we know, in theory at least, that in the life of a child of God there are no second causes, that even the most unjust and cruel things, as well as all seemingly pointless and undeserved sufferings, have been permitted by God as a glorious opportunity for us to react to them in such a way that our Lord and Savior is able to produce in us, little by little, his own lovely character.”

— Hannah Hurnard

38. “Prayer need not be a burdensome duty. It is meant to be a joyful and creative privilege.”

— Hannah Hurnard