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.

Harriet Martineau

It 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 Martineau

suppression diffusion truth

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

Harriet Martineau

funny-inspirational reading knowledge

Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education.

Harriet Martineau

views education men

All women should inform themselves of the condition of their sex and of their own position. It must necessarily follow that the noblest of them will, sooner or later, put forth a moral power which shall prostrate cant, and burst asunder the bonds (silken to some but cold iron to others) of feudal prejudice and usages. In the meantime is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race? If so, what is the ground of this limitation?

Harriet Martineau

iron race sex

You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.

Harriet Martineau

law-of-attraction future thinking

Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient.

Harriet Martineau

imperfect institutions inequality

I saw no poor men, except a few intemperate ones. I saw some very poor women; but God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of.

Harriet Martineau

discrimination saws men

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

Harriet Martineau

half power civilization

I certainly had no idea how little faith Christians have in their own faith till I saw how ill their courage and temper can stand any attack on it.

Harriet Martineau

atheism christian ideas

My own feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology.

Harriet Martineau

suffering christian feelings

The imagination, once awakened, must and will work, and ought to work

Harriet Martineau

awakened ought imagination

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.

Harriet Martineau

training america thinking

it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.

Harriet Martineau

identity matter

We are not responsible for our feelings, as we are for our principles and actions. ... Our care, then, should be to look to our principles, and to avoid all anxiety about our emotions. Their nature can never be wrong where our course of action is right, and for their degree we are not responsible.

Harriet Martineau

anxiety feelings looks

influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.

Harriet Martineau

morality truth sides

My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life.

Harriet Martineau

speaks-out atheism thinking

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.

Harriet Martineau

knees sorrow people

It is characteristic of genius to be hopeful and aspiring.

Harriet Martineau

characteristics hopeful genius

Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties in some pursuit.

Harriet Martineau

pursuit employment anticipation

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.

Harriet Martineau

religious philosophy believe