Anna Maria Hall

The love of ornament creeps slowly, but surely, into the female heart; the girl who twines the lily in her tresses, and looks at herself in the clear stream, will soon wish that the lily was fadeless, and the stream a mirror.

Anna Maria Hall (née Fielding; 6 January 1800 – 30 January 1881) was an Irish novelist who often published as "Mrs. S. C. Hall". She married Samuel Carter Hall, a writer on art, who described her in Retrospect of a Long Life, from 1815 to 1883. She was in Dublin, but left Ireland for England at the age of 15.

Quotes

  • Alas! how truly did he tell her, that the love of ornament creeps slowly, but surely, into the female heart;—that the girl who twines the lily in her tresses, and looks at herself in the clear stream, will soon wish that the lily was fadeless, and the stream a mirror.


Misattributed

  • Beauty depends more upon the movement of the face than upon the form of the features when at rest. Thus a countenance habitually under the influence of amiable feelings acquires a beauty of the highest order, from the frequency with which such feelings are the originating causes of the movement or expressions which stamp their character upon it.