Quote

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.

Hannah More

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Hannah More
Age: 88 †
Born: 1745
Born: February 2
Died: 1833
Died: September 7
Abolitionist
Essayist
Philanthropist
Playwright
Poet
Tragedy Writer
Writer
Will Chip
Mistake
Exterior
Practice
Interior
Common
Interiors
Without
Acquire
Nothing
Sign
Thing
Mark
Endeavoring
Thinking
Labor
Superficiality
Grace
Frequent

More quotes by Hannah More

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The keen spirit Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes!
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It is a part of Christianity to convert every natural talent to a religious use.
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It is doing some service to humanity, to amuse innocently. They know but little of society who think we can bear to be always employed, either in duties or meditation, without relaxation.
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If faith produce no works, I see That faith is not a living tree.
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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
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Everything which relates to God is infinite. We must therefore, while we keep our hearts humble, keep our aims high. Our highest services are indeed but finite, imperfect. But as God is unlimited in goodness, He should have our unlimited love.
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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.
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it may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision. There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us.
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Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
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we contrive to make revenge itself look like religion. We call down thunder on many a head under pretence, that those on whom we invoke it are God's enemies, when perhaps we invoke it because they are ours.
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Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.
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... it is a most severe trial for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life that education should lay up its rich resources.
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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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the modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.
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Affliction is a sort of moral gymnasium in which the disciples of Christ are trained to robust exercise, hardy exertion, and severe conflict.
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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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Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.
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we live in an age which must be amused, though genius, feeling, trust, and principle be the sacrifice.
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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.
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Pleasure is by much the most laborious trade I know, especially for those who have not a vocation to it.
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