“What good literature can do and does do—far greater than any importation of morality—is touch the human soul.”
“What good literature can do and does do—far greater than any importation of morality—is touch the human soul.”
Karen Swallow Prior
“What good literature can do and does do—far greater than any importation of morality—is touch the human soul.”
Karen Swallow Prior“From that moment, and for the rest of my life, my mother's words--perceptive and many others--have helped me to be the thing she saw and named in me.”
Karen Swallow Prior, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me“Besides, we were fifteen, and we couldn't get our feelings to match up with our brains. So we went with our feelings.”
Karen Swallow Prior, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me“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“I am so afraid that strangers with think me good! and there is a degree of hypocrisy in appearing much better than one is.” - Hannah More”
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“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“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“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“…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, AbolitionistAll in One Creative & Marketing Platform to tell stories at scale
