Date: 1777

"For the mind is an instrument, which, if wound too high, will lose its sweetness, and if not enough strained, will abate of its vigour."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"How cruel is it to extinguish by neglect or unkindness, the precious sensibility of an open temper, to chill the amiable glow of an ingenous soul, and to quench the bright flame of a noble and generous spirit!"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Great allowances must be made for a profusion of gaiety, loquacity, and even indiscretion in children, that there may be animation enough left to supply an active and useful character, when the first fermentation of the youthful passions is over, and the redundant spirits shall come to subside."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"But it is their nature never to observe a neutrality; they are either rebels or auxiliaries, and an enemy subdued is an ally obtained."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"If I may be allowed to change the allusion so soon, I would say, that the passions also resemble fires, which are friendly and beneficial when under proper direction, but if suffered to blaze without restraint, they carry devastation along with them, and, if totally extinguished, leave the benig...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"For I never will believe that envy, though passed through all the moral strainers, can be refined into a virtuous emulation, or lying improved into an agreeable turn for innocent invention."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"It [Genius] is an incommunicable faculty: no art or skill of the possessor can bestow the smallest portion of it on another: no pains or labour can reach the summit of perfection, where the seeds of it are wanting in the mind; yet it is capable of infinite improvement where it actually exists, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"It is true, the mind, as well as the eye, can take in objects larger than itself; but this is only true of great minds: for a man of low capacity, who considers a consummate genius, resembles one, who seeing a column for the first time, and standing at too great a distance to take in the whole o...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)