Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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

More quotes by Harriet Martineau

Image
Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit.
Harriet Martineau
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.
Harriet Martineau
Image
influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.
Harriet Martineau
Image
This noble word [women], spirit-stirring as it passes over English ears, is in America banished, and 'ladies' and 'females' substituted: the one to English taste mawkish and vulgar the other indistinctive and gross.
Harriet Martineau
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.
Harriet Martineau
Image
There are always principles to be depended upon in this matter of taxation ... Amidst the inconsistent, the bewildering representations offered, a certain number must be in accordance with true principles.
Harriet Martineau
Image
Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
Harriet Martineau
Image
Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.
Harriet Martineau
Image
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.
Harriet Martineau
Image
Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.
Harriet Martineau
Image
Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education.
Harriet Martineau
Image
[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!
Harriet Martineau
Image
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
Image
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