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
america republic aristocracy
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.
thinking america training
The sum and substance of female education in America, as in England, is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life, and to pretend that they do not think so.
america female noble
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.
order law america
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.
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.
queens america evil
A Queen, or a Prime Minister's secretary may be shot at in London, as we know; and probably there is no person eminent in literature or otherwise who has not been the object of some infirm brain or another. But in America the evil is sadly common.
class efforts
The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always,takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.
believe believing cannot english-writer help prove
We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.
best great ideas performs small
A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties.
heart men world
Men who pass most comfortably through this world are those who possess good digestions and hard hearts.
writing sacrifice order
if 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.
dream song echoes
Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams; And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song.
love lying disease
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.
education mother children
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.