62 Harriet Martineau Quotes About Life (SOCIOLOGIST)

Top 10 Most Famous Harriet Martineau Quotes (BEST)

“Wealth and opinion were practically worshipped before Washington opened his eyes on the sun which was to light him to his deeds; and the worship of Opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.”
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. — 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.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare. — **Readers** are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

“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

A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties. — A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small **duties**.

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.

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work. — The **imagination**, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work.

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

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

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.

20 Thought-Provoking Harriet Martineau Quotes

“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

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

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

“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

Influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth. — Influence which is given on the side of **money** is usually against **truth**.

Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united. The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least. — Goodness and **simplicity** are indissolubly united. The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.

“Are we not growing sensibly more merciful, more wisely humane towards empirics themselves, when they cease to be our oracles ? Are we not learning, from their jumbled discoveries and failures, that empiricism itself is a social function.”
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.

Ballads and popular songs are both the cause and effect of general morals; they are first formed, and then react. In both points of view they are an index of public morals.

“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

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

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

“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

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.

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

“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

Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a higher matter, our right of freedom of epistolary speech!

Pain is a mere disguise of blessings otherwise unattainable. — Pain is a mere disguise of **blessings** otherwise unattainable.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. — It is characteristic of **genius** to be **hopeful** and aspiring.

Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions. — Moral **excellence** has no regard to classes and professions.

17 Wise Harriet Martineau Quotes

“The truth is, as all will declare who are subject to a frequently recurring pain, a familiar pain becomes more and more dreaded, instead of becoming lightly esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The general sense of alarm which it probably occasioned when new, may have given way and disappeared before a knowledge of consequences, and a regular method of management or endurance; but the pain itself becomes more odious, more oppressive, more feared, in proportion to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, in proportion to the aggregate of painful associations which every visitation revives.”
Harriet Martineau

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

It is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.

“Rouse me from the depression of pain, wake me up from sleep for the better refreshment of this news, and I will rejoice ; but do not think to enhance your tidings by telling me that these things are my doing. The only effect of that is, to remind me how much better the service might have been done. Surely we both believe that all truth and goodness are destined to arise sooner or later among men. To be visited with new or good ideas is a blessing : to be appointed to communicate them is an honor : but these blessings and honors are a ground for personal humility, not complacency.”
Harriet Martineau

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.

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

“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

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

The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution.

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

4 Harriet Martineau Quotes About Love

“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

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

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. — 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**.

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

6 Harriet Martineau Quotes About Women

“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

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

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

“All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant, and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some but cold iron to others) of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race? If so, what is the ground of this limitation?”
Harriet Martineau

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

“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

5 Harriet Martineau Quotes About Religion

“As for the just and noble idea, that nations, as well as individuals, are parts of one wondrous whole, it has hardly passed the lips or pen of any but religious men and poets. It is the one great principle of the greatest religion which has ever nourished the morals of mankind.”
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. — 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.

“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