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.
Harriet MartineauAll 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.
Harriet MartineauIt is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.
Harriet MartineauPublic 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.
Harriet MartineauThe 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.
Harriet Martineauthe 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.
Harriet Martineau