Quotes from Harriet Martineau

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties.

There is no death to those who perfectly love-only disappearance, which in time may be borne.

It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.

If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.

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

Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.

Americans] have realized many things for which the rest of the world is still struggling...[yet] the civilization and the morals of the Americans fall far below their own principles.

Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a higher matter, — our right of freedom of epistolary speech !

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

Pain is] a mere disguise of blessings otherwise unattainable

Are we not growing sensibly more merciful, more wisely humane towards empirics themselves, when they cease to be our oracles ? Are we not learning, from their jumbled discoveries and failures, that empiricism itself is a social function

Far different was my emotion, when one said to me, with a face like the face of an angel, '' Why should we be bent upon your being better, and make up a bright prospect for you ? I see no brightness in it; and the time seems past for expecting you ever to be well. How my spirits rose in a moment at this recognition of the truth !

influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.

I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties.

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.

Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education.

Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.

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.

Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.

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

The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.