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.
Harriet MartineauWherever 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.
Harriet MartineauWe do not believe in immortality because we can't prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.
Harriet MartineauWho is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.
Harriet Martineau