Harriet Martineau

The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties.

A soul occupied with great ideas performs small duties.

Any one must see at a glance that if men and women marry those whom they do not love, they must love those whom they do not marry.

There have been few things in my life which have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of land.

It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature.

If there is any country on earth where the course of true love may be expected to run smooth, it is America.

But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonized, the religion cannot be healthy?

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honorable, than that of teaching?

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.

Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.