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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

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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
People
Caused
Bowing
Knees
Contemptuous
Serve
Estimate
Sorrow
Entertained
United
Knee
States
Permitted
Anything
Scarcely
Much
Observed

More quotes by Harriet Martineau

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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.
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It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.
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[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!
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I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.
Harriet Martineau
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Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit.
Harriet Martineau
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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
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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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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
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it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.
Harriet Martineau
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I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.
Harriet Martineau
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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
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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
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We do not believe in immortality because we can't prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.
Harriet Martineau
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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
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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
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Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song.
Harriet Martineau
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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
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If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.
Harriet Martineau
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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
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The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.
Harriet Martineau