Quotes from Harriet Martineau

Leisure, some degree of it, is necessary to the health of every man's spirit.

Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it.

It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

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. . .

Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.

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.

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country ... There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.

. . . is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?

Who is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.

We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.

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.

I think that few people are aware how early it is right to respect the modesty of an infant.

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.

Religion is a temper, not a pursuit.

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.

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.

I have no sympathy for those who, under any pressure of circumstances, sacrifice their heart's-love for legal prostitution.

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?

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?