Fierce Convictions Quotes

“It should be held as an eternal truth, that what is morally wrong can never be politically right.”65”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“God can carry on his own work, though all such poor tools as I were broken.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“A useful education served women best, More thought. To ‘learn how to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to a woman.’ Yet, when beauty is all that is expected or desired in a woman, she is left with nothing in its absence. It ‘is a most severe trail 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,’ she argued.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“The more I see of the ‘hounoured, famed, and great,’ the more I see of the littleness, the unsatisfactoriness of all created good; and that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the immortal principle within.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“…the rising movement of romanticism, with its characteristic idealism, one that tended toward a black-and-white view of the world based on those ideas, preferred for different reasons that women remain untinged by “masculine” traits of learning. Famous romantic writers such as Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt criticized the bluestockings. …and Hazlitt declared his 'utter aversion to Bluestockingism … I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what an author means.' Because of the tremendous influence that romanticism gained over the cultural mind-set, the term bluestocking came to be a derogatory term applied to learned, pedantic women, particularly conservative ones. ... Furthermore, learned women did not fit in with the romantic notion of a damsel in distress waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor any more than they fit in with the antirevolutionary fear of progress.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“…mischief, …arises not from our living in the world, but from the world living in us; occupying our hearts, and monopolizing our affections.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Her shift in thinking was clearly conflicted. It must have been difficult to disavow something for which she had a deep love and in which she had been immersed so much of her life.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“She taught the poor how to read and wash, observe Sunday and honour the King, and before her day no one had taught them anything.”103 More helped teach her nation to read.104”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Now, in order to do this, we must teach them to read. . . . And literacy, as historians frequently remind us, ‘was the necessary prelude to democracy.’ ”93”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“It would not be until the next century that the more radical concept of social mobility, as expressed in the American Dream, would emerge.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“embroiderers.” Rather than majoring in frivolities, women should be educated in useful subjects and “be furnished with a stock of ideas, and principles, and qualifications, and habits, ready to be applied and appropriated” in accordance with the roles to which they might be called. For, she continued, “when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“So if you want to know how you might change the world to God’s glory, read this book and learn the ways of the singular life within its pages. Then go and do likewise.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts—eighteenth-century versions of Reader’s Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for “delicious morsels,” one that spits out “every thing which is plain.” Good books, in contrast, require good readers: “In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them.”24”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Furthermore, even these limited accomplishments should be obtained, Barbauld cautioned, “in a quiet and unobserved manner” for the display of knowledge by a woman is “punished with disgrace.”6 Besides, the Monthly Review complained in a 1763 review, “intense thought spoils a lady’s features.”7”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“…evangelicals were instrumental in advancing the ideal of companionate marriage, one built on shared faith and mutual affection, a revolutionary notion in an era in which forced marriages were a not-so-distant memory.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Honor, More charged, 'is the religion of tragedy.' Emotions such as love, hate, ambition, pride, and jealousy, 'form a dazzling system of worldly morality,' which contradicts 'the spirit of that religion whose characteristics are charity, meekness, peaceableness, longsuffering, gentleness, forgiveness.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“It is so easy to practice a creditable degree of so seeming virtue, and so difficult to purify and direct the affections of the heart, that I feel myself in continual danger of appearing better than I am; and I verily believe it is possible to make one’s whole life a display of splendid virtue and agreeable qualities, without ever setting foot towards the narrow path, or even one’s face towards the strait gate.” – Hannah More”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“…the traditional family structure that More supported in her writings enabled women to 'be intelligent, rational, virtuous, and noble creatures, capable of great intellectual and moral achievements. They had the potential for immense influence on their husbands and sons, on their relations, their servants, and the poor.' More held, therefore, … 'the ideal of rational domesticity helped to liberate the individual within a supportive family framework.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“When a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and sing, and draw, and dress, and dance; it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who can reason and reflect, and feel, and judge, and discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, sooth his sorrows, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.” – Hannah More”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Rather than majoring in frivolities, women should be educated in useful subjects and 'be furnished with a stock of ideas, and principles, and qualifications, and habits, ready to be applied and appropriated…' - Hannah More”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“The topic was eloquence, something Christians had been conflicted about since the first-century church when Paul wrote that in bringing the gospel, he did not come with “eloquence.” A few centuries later, Saint Augustine wrestled with the value of eloquence, associating it with his pagan background and training in Greek rhetoric while simultaneously employing it winsomely in his Christian writings. Such suspicion of beauty and form, whether in art, literature, speech, or human flesh, has shadowed Christian thought throughout the history of the church; sadly so, considering God is the author of all beauty.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts—eighteenth-century Reader’s Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for “delicious morsels,” one that spits out “every thing which is plain.” Good books, in contrast, require good readers: “In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist