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MARTINEAU, James Quotes
(1805-1900), English Unitarian clergyman
It is surprising how practical duty enriches the fancy and the heart, and action clears and deepens the affections.
Every fiction that has ever laid strong hold on human belief is the mistaken image of some great truth.
We do not believe in immortality because we have proved it, but, we forever try to prove it because we believe it.
The moral progression of a people can scarcely begin till they are independent.
Where social improvements originate with the clergy, and where they bear a just share of the toil, the condition of morals and manners cannot be very much depressed.
Learn what a people glory in, and you may learn much of both the theory and practice of their morals.
The health of a community, is an almost unfailing index of its morals.
All the grand agencies which the progress of mankind evolves are the aggregate result of countless wills, each of which, thinking merely of its own end. and perhaps fully gaining it, is at the same time enlisted by Providence in the secret service of the world.
A ritual religion is generally light and gay, not serious in its spirit; all religions being so, which cast responsibility into outward observances.
Christianity is the good man's text; his life is the illustration. How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.
Heaven and God are best discerned through tears; scarcely perhaps are discerned at all without them. The constant association of prayer with the hour of bereavement and the scenes of death suffice to show this.
What science calls the unity and uniformity of nature, truth calls the fidelity of God.
All the grand agencies which the progress of mankind evolves are the aggregate result of countless wills, each of which, thinking merely of its own end, and perhaps fully gaining it, is at the same time enlisted by Providence in the secret service of the world.
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