Jane Porter Quotations

I never yet heard man or woman much abused that I was not inclined to think the better of them, and to transfer the suspicion or dislike to the one who found pleasure in pointing out the defects of another.

The doubts of love are never to be wholly overcome; they grow with its various anxieties, timidities, and tenderness, and are the very fruits of the reverence in which the admired object is beheld.

The flatterer easily insinuates himself into the closet, while honest merit stands shivering in the hall or antechamber.

Virtue, without the graces, is like a rich diamond unpolished--it hardly looks better than a common pebble; but when the hand of the master rubs off the roughness, and forms the sides into a thousand brilliant surfaces, it is then that we acknowledge its worth, admire its beauty, and long to wear it in our bosoms.

That grief is the most durable which flows inward, and buries its streams with its fountain, in the depths of the heart.

There is nothing so clear-sighted and sensible as a noble mind in a low estate.

Magnanimity is above circumstance; and any virtue which depends on that is more of constitution than of principle.

National antipathy is the basest, because the most illiberal and illiterate of all prejudices.

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must be understood that it is not the mere shell that we admire; we are attracted by the idea that this shell is only a beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering.