Harriet Martineau
Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Book
It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring. It is characteristic of genius to break up the artificial arrangements of conventionalism, and to view mankind in true perspective, in their gradations of inherent rather than of adventitious worth. Genius is therefore essentially democratic, and has always been so.Collection: Views
There is no death to those who perfectly love-only disappearance, which in time may be borne.Collection: Grief
[I] wish that the land-tax went a little more according to situation than it does. 'Tis really ridiculous, how one has to pay five times as much as another, without any reason that ever I heard tell.Collection: Land
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.Collection: Order
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.Collection: Numbers
The habit of dwelling on the past, has a narrowing as well as a debilitating influence. Behind us, there is a small, - an almost insignificant measure of time; before us, there is an eternity. It is the natural tendency of the mind to magnify the one, and to diminish the other.Collection: Past
Moral excellence has no regard to classes and professions.Collection: Class
I have no sympathy for those who, under any pressure of circumstances, sacrifice their heart's-love for legal prostitution.Collection: Heart
As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make them happy, fails to make them good, fails to make them wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of two thousand years ago.Collection: Wise
I certainly never believed, more or less, in the "essential doctrines" of Christianity, which represent God as the predestinator of men to sin and perdition, and Christ as their rescuer from that doom. I never was more or less behuiled by the trickery of language by which the perdition of man is made out to be justice, and his redemption to be mercy.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Moving
Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.-The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.Collection: Simplicity
Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.Collection: Men
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.Collection: America
During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time, when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would tremble through the whole of society.Collection: Men
I never did a right thing or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of reward or punishment.Collection: Punishment
Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life.Collection: Spiritual
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.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: God
All people interested in their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them.Collection: Eye
Must love be ever treated with profaneness as a mere illusion? or with coarseness as a mere impulse? or with fear as a mere disease? or with shame as a mere weakness? or with levity as a mere accident? whereas it is a great mystery and a great necessity, lying at the foundation of human existence, morality, and happiness,--mysterious, universal, inevitable as death.Collection: Love
[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!Collection: Pain
[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.Collection: Wise
I think that few people are aware how early it is right to respect the modesty of an infant.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Atheism
His subject is the "Origin of Species," & not the origin of Organization; & it seems a needless mischief to have opened the latter speculation at all.Collection: Organization
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.Collection: Ignorance
. . . is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?Collection: Race
I wrote because I could not help it. There was something that I wanted to say, and I said it: that was all. The fame and the money and the usefulness might or might not follow. It was not by my endeavor if they did.Collection: Might
I loved, as I still love, the most monotonous life possible.Collection: Monotonous Life
It never enters the lady's head that the wet-nurse's baby probably dies.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: America
The voice of a whole people goes up in the silent workings of an institution.Collection: Voice
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.Collection: Dark
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.Collection: Inspiration
School is no place of education for any children whatever till their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a sensible woman.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Powerful
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. . .Collection: Theory
the systematic abuse with which the newspapers of one side assail every candidate coming forward on the other, is the cause of many honorable men, who have a regard to their reputation, being deterred from entering public life; and of the people being thus deprived of some better servants than any they have.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Strong
For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchenthan witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.Collection: Europe
We do not believe in immortality because we can't prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Choices