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The last thing it [government] ought to do is to ground its proceedings on the ignorance of the people, - to yield them that which they will hereafter despise the donors for granting 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
Yield
Ground
Ignorance
Proceedings
Ought
Granting
Lasts
Donors
Last
Proceeding
Government
Hereafter
Thing
Despise
More quotes by 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
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
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
The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.
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
[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
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
Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song.
Harriet Martineau
It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.
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
I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.
Harriet Martineau
It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.
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
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
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
Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.
Harriet Martineau
Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.
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
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
I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.
Harriet Martineau
