The woman who derives her principles from the Bible, and her amusements from intellectual sources, from the beauties of nature, and from active employment and exercise, will not pant for beholders. She is no clamorous beggar for the extorted alms of admiration. She lives on her own stock. She possesses the truest independence. She does not wait for the opinion of the world, to know if she is right; nor for the applause of the world, to know if she is happy.
This quote from Hannah More grabbed me when I first read it a few months ago in Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist, and it grabbed me again when I was looking back through my commonplace book the other day. I love it because it shows that More faced the same temptations to seek the “applause of the world” 200+ years ago that we do today (if in different ways), and because she gives some practical ways to fortify ourselves against those temptations.
