Harriet Martineau Quotes

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education.

I certainly had no idea how little faith Christians have in their own faith till I saw how ill their courage and temper can stand any attack on it.

Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.

You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.

My own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work

It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.

I saw no poor men, except a few intemperate ones. I saw some very poor women; but God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of.

it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.

Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.

I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.

influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.

The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.

I have no sympathy for those who, under any pressure of circumstances, sacrifice their heart's-love for legal prostitution.

All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.

Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?

It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.

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

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.

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.

Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.

Scarcely anything that I observed in the United States caused me so much sorrow as the contemptuous estimate of the people entertained by those who were bowing the knee to be permitted to serve them.

It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered.

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.

Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams; And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song.

If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.

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.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit. It is the moral atmosphere in which human beings are to live and move. Men do not live to breathe: they breathe to live.

Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.

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

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties.

I romanced internally about early death till it was too late to die early.

. . . is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

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.

There is no death to those who perfectly love-only disappearance, which in time may be borne.

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

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order ... If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

Who is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.

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

We do not believe in immortality because we can't prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country ... There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.