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.
Harriet MartineauMy own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.
Harriet MartineauThe clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question.
Harriet MartineauIt is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true, or the suppression of things that are true.
Harriet Martineauif I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I would keep the old and precious privacy,-the inestimable right of every one who has a friend and can write to him, - I would keep our written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the good of society.
Harriet Martineau