Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineauwas a British social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth12 June 1802
Harriet Martineau quotes about
book miracle atheism
The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.
simplicity world sophisticated
Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.
heart taught-us mind
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.
communication light discovery
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.
religious philosophy believe
I hope and believe my co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters... they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy.
truth diffusion suppression
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.
want common breezy
I want to be a free rover on the breezy common of the universe.
ideas pennies affection
The Penny Post will do more for the circulation of ideas, for the fostering of domestic affections, for the humanizing of the mass generally, than any other single measure that our national wit can devise.
book practice house
Of tobacco and its consequences, I will say nothing but that the practice is at too bad a pass to leave hope that anything that could be said in books would work a cure. If the floors of boarding-houses, and the decks of steam-boats, and the carpets of the Capitol, do not sicken the Americans into a reform; if the warnings of physicians are of no avail, what remains to be said? I dismiss the nauseous subject.
school circles america
It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest.
choices done amusement
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.
strong years feelings
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.
powerful evil sick
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.
dark tyrants silence
Public opinion, - a tyrant, sitting in the dark, wrapt up in mystification and vague terrors of obscurity; deriving power no one knows from whom ... - but irresistible in its power to quell thought, to repress action, to silence conviction ...