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

More quotes by Harriet Martineau

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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.
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it is the worst humiliation and grievance of the suffering, that they cause suffering.
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Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.
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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.
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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.
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Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.
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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.
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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
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. . . is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?
Harriet Martineau
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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
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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
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If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order ... If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.
Harriet Martineau
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[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.
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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
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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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influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.
Harriet Martineau