Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Harriet Martineau
Age: 74 †
Born: 1802
Born: June 12
Died: 1876
Died: June 27
Economist
Essayist
Feminist
Historian
Journalist
Linguist
Novelist
Philosopher
Sociologist
Suffragist
Translator
Writer
Norwich
Norfolk
Occasion
Reason
Occasions
Sign
Reasons
Argument
Assign
Weakness
Multitude
Sure
Multitudes
Inspirational
More quotes by 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
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
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
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
If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.
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
it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.
Harriet Martineau
Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song.
Harriet Martineau
The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.
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
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
[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
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
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.
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 never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.
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
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
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
influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.
Harriet Martineau
