Harriet Martineau Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Harriet Martineau quote about:
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“The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“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 -
“Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“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.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?”
-- 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 characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“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 -
“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 -
“it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“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 -
“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 -
“it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.”
-- Harriet Martineau -
“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 -
“It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. It is characteristic of genius to break up the artificial arrangements of conventionalism, and to view mankind in true perspective, in their gradations of inherent rather than of adventitious worth. Genius is therefore essentially democratic, and has always been so ...”
-- 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 -
“[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 -
“[On being deaf:] We must struggle for whatever may be had, without encroaching on the comfort of others.”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“I romanced internally about early death till it was too late to die early ...”
-- 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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient ...”
-- Harriet Martineau
