Top 100 Hannah More Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A small unkindness is a great offence.”

— Hannah More

2. “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

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

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

5. “Prayer is not eloquence but earnestness.”

— Hannah More

6. “When thou hast truly thanked the Lord for every blessing sent, But little time will then remain for murmur or lament.”

— Hannah More

7. “Man can see his reflection in water only when he bends down close to it, and the heart of man, too, must lean down to the heart of his fellow; then it will see itself within his heart.”

— Hannah More

8. “If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.”

— Hannah More

9. “It is not so important to know everything as to know the exact value of everything, to appreciate what we learn and to arrange what we know.”

— Hannah More

10. “That silence is one of the great arts of conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it.”

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

12. “Did not God Sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, We should be ruined at our own request.”

— Hannah More

13. “Life though a short, is a working day. Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good.”

— Hannah More

14. “All desire the gifts of God, but they do not desire God.”

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

16. “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

17. “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

18. “I am persuaded that there is no affection of the human heart more exquisitely pure, than that which is felt by a grateful son towards a mother...”

— Hannah More

19. “Sow an action, reap a habit.”

— Hannah More

20. “To be good and disagreeable is high treason against the royalty of virtue.”

— Hannah More

21. “The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.”

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

23. “It should be held as an eternal truth, that what is morally wrong can never be politically right.”

— Hannah More

24. “Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.”

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

26. “Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.”

— Hannah More

27. “One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire helps to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act.”

— Hannah More

28. “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.”

— Hannah More

29. “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

30. “If I wanted to punish an enemy it should be by fastening on him or her the trouble of constantly hating somebody.”

— Hannah More

31. “The soul on earth is an immortal guest.”

— Hannah More

32. “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.”

— Hannah More

33. “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

34. “Subduing and subdued, the petty strife, Which clouds the colour of domestic life; The sober comfort, all the peace which springs From the large aggregate of little things; On these small cares of daughter, wife or friend, The almost sacred joys of home depend.”

— Hannah More

35. “Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.”

— Hannah More

36. “No man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.”

— Hannah More

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

— Hannah More

38. “The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.”

— Hannah More

39. “Love never reasons, but profusely gives; it gives like a thoughtless prodigal its all, and then trembles least it has done to little...”

— Hannah More

40. “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

41. “Genius without religion is only a lamp on the outer gate of a palace; it may serve to cast a gleam of light on those that are without, while the inhabitant sits in darkness.”

— Hannah More

42. “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.”

— Hannah More

43. “A faint endeavor ends in a sure defeat.”

— Hannah More

44. “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.”

— Hannah More

45. “People talk as if the act of death made a complete change in the nature, as well as in the condition of man. Death is the vehicle to another state of being, but possesses no power to qualify us for that state. In conveying us to a new world it does not give us a new heart.”

— Hannah More

46. “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!”

— Hannah More

47. “Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains.”

— Hannah More

48. “Gentleness is the outgrowth of benignity.”

— Hannah More

49. “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.”

— Hannah More

50. “Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.”

— Hannah More