Harriet Martineau Quotes

[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

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

Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

The last degree of honesty has always been, and is still considered incompatible with statesmanship. To hunger and thirst after righteousness has been naturally, as it were, supposed a disqualification for affairs ... ~ Harriet Martineau

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare. ~ Harriet Martineau

As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago. ~ Harriet Martineau

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties. ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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

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

Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew, - if that be its standard, here it is ... I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties ... shower down upon her a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" - "Yes, but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults. ~ Charles Dickens

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

[I] wish that the land-tax went a little more according to situation than it does. 'Tis really ridiculous, how one has to pay five times as much as another, without any reason that ever I heard tell. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

[On being deaf:] We must struggle for whatever may be had, without encroaching on the comfort of others. ~ Harriet Martineau

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it. ~ Harriet Martineau

I hope and believe my co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters ... they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy. ~ Harriet Martineau

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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

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

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit. ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

[On being deaf:] How much less pain there is in calmly estimating the enjoyments from which we must separate ourselves, of bravely saying, for once and for ever, 'Let them go,' than in feeling them waste and dwindle, till their very shadows escape from our grasp! ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

The habit of dwelling on the past, has a narrowing as well as a debilitating influence. Behind us, there is a small, - an almost insignificant measure of time; before us, there is an eternity. It is the natural tendency of the mind to magnify the one, and to diminish the other ... ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible ... ~ Harriet Martineau

During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time, when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would tremble through the whole of society. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

You 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. ~ Harriet Martineau

[Americans] have realized many things for which the rest of the world is still struggling ... [yet] the civilization and the morals of the Americans fall far below their own principles. ~ Harriet Martineau

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

We are not responsible for our feelings, as we are for our principles and actions ... Our care, then, should be to look to our principles, and to avoid all anxiety about our emotions. Their nature can never be wrong where our course of action is right, and for their degree we are not responsible. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

Influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth. ~ Harriet Martineau

This noble word [women], spirit-stirring as it passes over English ears, is in America banished, and 'ladies' and 'females' substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar; the other indistinctive and gross. ~ Harriet Martineau

There are always principles to be depended upon in this matter of taxation ... Amidst the inconsistent, the bewildering representations offered, a certain number must be in accordance with true principles ... ~ Harriet Martineau

A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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. ~ Harriet Martineau

It is a testament to the strength and purity of the democratic sentiment in the country, that the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit. ~ Harriet Martineau

Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life. ~ Harriet Martineau

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

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

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

Help me. Please?"
She gave him an abashed nod (but not nearly so
abashed as she ought) and turned to Harriet. "I think that Lord Winstead refers to the rhyming qualities of the title." Harriet blinked a few times. "It doesn't rhyme."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Elizabeth burst out. " Finstead Winstead?"
Harriet's gasp very nearly sucked the air from the room. "I never noticed!" she exclaimed.
"Obviously," her sister drawled.
"I must have been thinking about you when I wrote
the play," Harriet said to Daniel. From her expression, he gathered he was meant to feel flattered, so he tried to smile. ~ Julia Quinn

God has always been to me not so much like a father as like a dear and tender mother. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

What initially attracts us and what later becomes 'the problem' are usually one and the same. ~ Harriet Lerner

I am a very big admirer of Hillary 's and I am an admirer of Obama as well. ~ Harriet Harman

Well, it is to be confessed that the cold of warm climates always has a peculiarly aggravating effect on the mind. A warm region is just like some people who get such a character for good temper, that they never can indulge themselves even in an earnest disclaimer without everybody crying out upon them, "What puts you in such a passion?" &c. So Nature, if she generally sets up for amiability during the winter months, cannot be allowed a little tiff now and then, a white frost, a cold rain-storm, without being considered a monster. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

We do not claim that punning is legitimate wit. Wit consists in combination of ideas, punning in combination of words only. We wonder at the one, but we laugh at the drollery of the other - as the world goes a pun is regarded as an imponderable commodity, all know the rank it holds in the order of pure intellect. ~ Harriet Hosmer

See, I did finally practice that adoring look you demanded, and I'm now going to suggest you try your hand at looking adoringly back at me," she muttered out of the side of her mouth even as she kept her smile firmly in place. "The guests will get suspicious if I'm the only one doing the whole adoring business."
His lips curved into a returning smile. She was so beautiful and so different from anyone he'd ever known that he decided there and then that, although this was to be the last night they were together, he was going to make the most out of it. ~ Jen Turano

Believing that all women should want to be mothers makes about as much sense as believing that all men should want to be engineers. ~ Harriet Lerner

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

During your life, everything you do and everyone you meet rubs off in some way. Some bit of everything you experience stays with everyone you've ever known, and nothing is lost. That's what is eternal, these little specks of experience in a great, enormous river that has no end. ~ Harriet Doerr

There have been times when I have thought, if the whole country would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I would willingly sink with it. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I just like watching people who really are not self-conscious, who aren't aware, because I fear that one could become too self-conscious, too artful, as an actor. Sometimes if you look at somebody, you can extrapolate from their exterior what might be happening in their interior. I'm nosy. ~ Harriet Walter

But you can see it, Harriet, a look in his eyes, an alertness, as if somewhere behind the disease, behind the scar tissue, behind the fog of disassociation, Bernard is all there, he's just lost his ability to communicate. Like somebody turned off his volume. You're certain he can see everything that is transpiring with crystal clarity, and he can't do a goddamn thing about it. ~ Jonathan Evison

Don't run away from it, just because it's difficult. ~ Harriet Evans

Money is a great help everywhere; - can't have too much, if you get it honestly. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

I'm childish and silly. Most people tease me because I'm a bit daft. ~ Harriet Walter

Lives that flash in sunshine, and lives that are born in tears, receive their hue from circumstances. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

It has always been a favorite idea of mine, that there is so much of the human in every man, that the life of any one individual, however obscure, if really and vividly perceived in all its aspirations, struggles, failures, and successes, would command the interest of all others. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I was learning, even in my brief time in England, that a cup of tea almost always helped. I didn't know whether it was the caffeine, the warmth, or the simple fact of having someone else do something kind, but a soothing cup of tea in Harriet Dalrymple's cottage was fast becoming my lifeline to sanity. ~ Beth Pattillo

On the other hand, there are only so many people who really knew how she was exactly, like what did her accent sound like, and the fact that she developed profound deafness when she was first running the Harriet Lane. ~ Mary Stuart Masterson

One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those who are excluded from heaven, as the reason; but no, - they are condemned for not doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

No sinful word, nor deed of wrong, Nor thoughts that idly rove; But simple truth be on our tongue, And in our hearts be love. ST. AMBROSE. Let us all resolve,--First, to attain the grace of SILENCE; Second, to deem all FAULT-FINDING that does no good a SIN, and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling on them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life; Third, to practise the grace and virtue of PRAISE. HARRIET B. STOWE. ~ Mary W. Tileston

It was completely still, not a sound within or outside. As if it was just the two of them, nothing more in the world, in this room alone. ~ Harriet Evans

I was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. ~ Harriet Tubman

Yet few slaveholders seem to be aware of the widespread moral ruin occasioned by this wicked system. Their talk is of blighted cotton crops
not of the blight on their children's souls. ~ Harriet Jacobs

Abraham Lincoln. When he met Stowe, it is claimed that he said, So you're the little woman that started this great war! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

But now what? Why, now comes my master, takes me right away from my work, and my friends, and all I like, and grinds me down into the very dirt! And why? Because, he says, I forgot who I was; he says, to teach me that I am only a nigger! After all, and last of all, he comes between me and my wife, and says I shall give her up, and live with another woman. And all this your laws give him power to do, in spite of God or man. Mr. Wilson, look at it! There isn't one of all these things, that have broken the hearts of my mother and my sister, and my wife and myself, but your laws allow, and give every man power to do, in Kentucky, and none can say to him nay! Do you call these the laws of my country? Sir, I haven't any country, anymore than I have any father. But I'm going to have one. I don't want anything of your country, except to be let alone,--to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I'll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say your fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me! ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. ~ Harriet Ann Jacobs

The Lord gives a good many things twice over, but he don't give ye a mother but once. Ye'll never see such another woman, Mas'r George - not if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Well, when I was growing up it was Ozzie and Harriet on TV - nobody's parents were like that. ~ Liza Minnelli

As long as we can feel hope, there is hope. ~ Harriet Lerner

If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. ~ Harriet Tubman

The human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life. The beautiful things that God makes are His gift to all alike. I know there are many of the poor who have fine feeling and a keen sense of the beautiful, which rusts out and dies because they are too hard pressed to procure it any gratification. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Dogs can bear more cold than human beings, but they do not like cold any better than we do; and when a dog has his choice, he will very gladly stretch himself on a rug before the fire for his afternoon nap. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

If you're married to an entrenched non-apologizer, it won't help to doggedly demand one. Some folks lack the self-esteem required to take responsibility for their less than honorable behaviors, feel remorse, and offer a heartfelt apology. And many people are so hard on themselves for the mistakes they make, they don't have the emotional room to admit vulnerability and apologize to a partner. ~ Harriet Lerner