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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
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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
Would
Atheism
Orthodoxy
Quiet
Superstition
Months
Stake
Freedom
Superstitions
Peace
Exchange
Next
Stakes
Take
Burned
Must
Month
More quotes by 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 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
. . . is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?
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 never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.
Harriet Martineau
Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.
Harriet Martineau
Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.
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 clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.
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
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
I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.
Harriet Martineau
I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.
Harriet Martineau
Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.
Harriet Martineau
I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train.
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
Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.
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
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
it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.
Harriet Martineau