Harriet Martineau Quotes - Page 3

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• Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness,--mysterious, universal, inevitable as death.

  Harriet Martineau

  Love, Lying, Disease

  9 Copy quote

• I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

  Harriet Martineau

  Atheism, Superstitions, Next

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.568, Broadview Press

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• [On being deaf:] We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is, either to sink under the trial, or to be made callous by it. The best is, to be as wise as is possible under a great disability, and as happy as is possible under a great privation.

  Harriet Martineau

  Wise, Views, Trials

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• I think that few people are aware how early it is right to respect the modesty of an infant.

  Harriet Martineau

  Thinking, People, Modesty

  Harriet Martineau (1849). “Household Education”, p.294

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• His subject is the "Origin of Species," & not the origin of Organization; & it seems a needless mischief to have opened the latter speculation at all.

  Harriet Martineau

  Organization, Latter, Origin Of Species

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• The last thing it [government] ought to do is to ground its proceedings on the ignorance of the people, - to yield them that which they will hereafter despise the donors for granting them.

  Harriet Martineau

  Ignorance, Yield, Government

  Harriet Martineau (1834). “Illustrations of taxation”, p.117

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• I wrote because I could not help it. There was something that I wanted to say, and I said it: that was all. The fame and the money and the usefulness might or might not follow. It was not by my endeavor if they did.

  Harriet Martineau

  Might, Helping, Fame

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.394, Broadview Press

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• I want to be a free rover on the breezy common of the universe.

  Harriet Martineau

  Freedom, Want, Common

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• Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction.

  Harriet Martineau

  Dark, Tyrants, Silence

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.138

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• Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.

  Harriet Martineau

  America, Republic, Aristocracy

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.117

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• The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these, none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the permanent nature of good, and the transient nature of evil.

  Harriet Martineau

  Powerful, Sick, Evil

  Harriet Martineau (1845). “Life in the Sick-room: Essays”, p.17

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• I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

  Harriet Martineau

  Writing, Literature, Traveler

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.330, Broadview Press

  9 Copy quote

• But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy?

  Harriet Martineau

  Nature, Healthy, Literature

  Harriet Martineau (1962). “Society in America”

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• Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

  Harriet Martineau

  Religion, Atheism, Literature

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.158

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• Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it.

  Harriet Martineau

  Choices, Done, Amusement

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.155, Broadview Press

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• School is no place of education for any children whatever till their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a sensible woman.

  Harriet Martineau

  Education, Mother, Children

  Harriet Martineau (1849). “Household education”, p.139

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• As new discoveries are causing all-penetrating physical lights so to abound as that, as has been said, we shall soon not know where in the world to get any darkness, so our new facilities for every sort of communication work to reduce privacy much within its former limits.

  Harriet Martineau

  Communication, Light, Discovery

  Harriet Martineau (1845). “Life in the Sick-room: Essays”, p.90

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• There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties. . .

  Harriet Martineau

  Theory, Faculty, Universe

  Henry George Atkinson, Harriet Martineau (1851). “Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development: By Henry George Atkinson ... and Harriet Martineau ...”, p.222

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• the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have.

  Harriet Martineau

  Men, Honorable Man, People

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.76

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• There have been few things in my life which have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of land.

  Harriet Martineau

  Land, Mind, Pieces

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.411, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• The Penny Post will do more for the circulation of ideas, for the fostering of domestic affections, for the humanizing of the mass generally, than any other single measure that our national wit can devise.

  Harriet Martineau

  Ideas, Pennies, Affection

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• While feeling far less injured by toil than my friends took for granted I must be, I yet was always aware of the strong probability that my life would end as the lives of hard literary workers usually end, - in paralysis, with months or years of imbecility.

  Harriet Martineau

  Strong, Years, Feelings

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.118, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room ... Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when.

  Harriet Martineau

  Brother, Truth, Medicine

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• The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.

  Harriet Martineau

  Book, Miracle, Atheism

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.233

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• For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchenthan witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.

  Harriet Martineau

  Europe, Class, Suffering

  "Society in America". Book by Harriet Martineau, 1837.

  7 Copy quote

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